The Internet Monk Archives

Let’s Review: Some basic concepts at Internet Monk (1) — Post-evangelical

Gethsemani Impressions: Stations of the Cross Path (2017)

Let’s Review
Some basic concepts at Internet Monk (1) — Post-evangelical

I thought it might be a good time to review some basic concepts that have taken hold over the years here at Internet Monk. Some of these, of course, were introduced by the blog’s founder, Michael Spencer. Others come from Chaplain Mike, with thanks to friends and partners who have contributed. Since I, Chaplain Mike, am setting these forth, the language and emphases will be mine (except where directly quoted from Michael or others).

In my view, these represent the “fundamentals,” as it were, of Internet Monk. These are the themes the site and its conversations are built upon, the themes we return to again and again.

We begin today with an adjective used often around here. The subtitle for the blog for years was, “Dispatches from the Post-Evangelical Wilderness.” Though we adapted that a few years ago to “Conversations in the Great Hall,” we who write at Internet Monk by and large continue our journey away from American evangelicalism and remain critical of that culture.

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Post-evangelical

“…to be post-evangelical is to reject evangelical culture in favor of a more catholic, diverse and ancient expression of the Christian faith, while adhering to evangelical doctrine without becoming part of team or faction operating under the illusion of superiority to others and a closure of the Christian conversation.”

• Michael Spencer, 2006

For Michael Spencer, me, and many others here at Internet Monk, American “evangelicalism” became a problem. How did Michael define this “evangelicalism”? Here is a summary of his thoughts, taken from a 2006 post called “What Do I Mean by Post-Evangelical?”.

Evangelicalism [is] a twentieth century movement meeting the following qualifications:

Protestant, even strongly anti-Catholic
Baptistic, even in its non-Baptist form
Shaped by the influence of Billy Graham and his dominance as an symbol and leader
Shaped by the influence of Southern Baptist dominance in the conception of evangelism
Influenced by revivalism and the ethos of the Second Great Awakening
Open to the use of technology
Oriented around individualistic pietism and a vision of individualistic Christianity
Committed to church growth as the primary evidence of evangelism
Committed to missions as a concept and a calling, but less as a methodology
Asserting sola scriptura, but largely unaware of the influence of its own traditions
Largely anti-intellectual and populist in its view of education
Traditionally conservative on social, political and cultural issues
Anti-creedal, reluctantly confessional
Revisionist toward Christian history in order to establish its own historical legitimacy
Attempting, and largely failing, to establish a non-fundamentalist identity
A low view of the sacraments and sacramental theology
A dispensational eschatology, revolving around the rapture and apocalyptic views of immanent last days

I think if Michael were writing this list today, he would include more about the pervasive influence of various forms of Pentecostal/Charismatic movements and the prosperity gospel in evangelicalism, and especially the more profound and public involvement of evangelicals in American politics and the culture wars. In his most famous post, The Coming Evangelical Collapse (2009), he made this forecast:

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This was a mistake that will have brutal consequences. They are not only going to suffer in losing causes, they will be blamed as the primary movers of those causes. Evangelicals will become synonymous with those who oppose the direction of the culture in the next several decades. That opposition will be increasingly viewed as a threat, and there will be increasing pressure to consider evangelicals bad for America, bad for education, bad for children and bad for society.

The investment of evangelicals in the culture war will prove out to be one of the most costly mistakes in our history. The coming evangelical collapse will come about, largely, because our investment in moral, social and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. We’re going to find out that being against gay marriage and rhetorically pro-life (yes, that’s what I said) will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence and are believing in a cause more than a faith.

To be a post-evangelical is described by Michael Spencer like this: “I mean that I do not recognize the boundary lines of American evangelicalism as the boundary lines of true Christianity.” Today, with their prominence in the political/culture wars, evangelicalism has not only stepped forward to say they are the only true Christianity but that they are the only true promoters of the American project. Speaking for myself, this has only further distanced me from a religious culture I spent most of my life serving.

Michael goes on to list some contrary conclusions he came to, having observed this evangelical culture.

Creeds have positive and defining roles.
Practicing any form of Christian community should interact with the larger church in history and reality.
Christian belief emerges from a matrix of the text of Holy Scripture, the history of interpretation, cultural and sub-cultural presuppositions, the use of reason, the place of experience, the wisdom of the teachers of the larger church and the work of the Holy Spirit in revealing more light. Not from a “magic book.”
The paradigms of denominationalism, education, worship, church growth, evangelism, Christian experience and so on that have dominated evangelicalism in the twentieth century are dead.
Words like “postmodern,” “emerging” and “missional” are in the process of being defined and filled with meaning, and are not to be ridiculed and rejected out of hand.
I reject the idea that the primary role of a minister is to define other Christians as wrong.
The death of evangelicalism opens the door for a return to the sources and a fresh examination of the meaning of Jesus.
Large churches are not the good thing we thought they were, and the renewal of the church, ministry and worship is a movement of many, small churches.
Those leading worship and teaching the Christian life in American Christianity should repent of their previous allegiance to the assumptions of evangelicalism and seek to hear the voice of the Spirit again.

Again, if this list were written today, much more would be said about the mixture of politics and faith as well as the infiltration of dubious theological influences such as the prosperity gospel, third-wave pentecostalism (neo-charismatic movement), and the New Apostolic Reformation.

I have written my own list of the characteristics of American evangelical culture that I found troubling, which ultimately became deal-breakers for me.

A lack of understanding of and respect for history and tradition,
A “solo Scriptura,” “biblicist,” literalistic, precisionist view of the Bible that does not adequately grasp the human genesis of the biblical material and its historical development into becoming “scripture,” not allowing room for literary genre and ancient ways of communication, neglecting the history of biblical interpretation, failing to recognize the authority of the church in relation to scripture, and the influence of many other factors in reading and interpreting the Bible,
Paradigms of church growth that stress building institutions rather than loving and helping people,
Models of church structure, leadership, and organization that turn the church into a corporate marketing and business enterprise rather than the fellowship of God’s people,
Models of ministry that depend on strategies, plans, and programs more than upon the Word and Spirit,
A continual confusion of means and ends, and the inability to see that changing methods can and does alter the message,
Pastors who are CEOs or inspirational speakers rather than pastors and spiritual directors,
Preaching that sets forth principles to help us live as good, moral people, rather than proclaiming what Jesus did and does for lost and sinful people,
Separatism: a “temple-oriented” approach to the Christian life wherein everything revolves around the church and its programs (“churchianity”), so that churches are turned into family-friendly, religious activity centers rather than places of true discipleship designed to send people back into daily life where the real Christian life is lived,
“Worship” that is more about the worshiper and his/her preferences and emotional experiences than about giving honor to the true and living God and reenacting the story of Christ,
Captivity to a conservative (usually Republican) political agenda,
An inability to see the dangers of power and greed as clearly as the dangers of immorality, and a failure to see all three in its own people and institutions while simultaneously living in judgment of the “world’s” sins,
A culture-war approach to public issues, wherein believers and churches take up rhetorical “arms” and wage war against those who disagree with them,
An entire culture of religious consumers strung along by a “Christian-industrial complex” of corporations who get rich by marketing and selling stuff to them.

To describe ourselves as post-evangelical is to tell people where we’ve been, it doesn’t say anything about where we’re going. Michael spent the rest of his life in the “post-evangelical wilderness,” never finding an ecclesiastical home. If you read from the beginning of the blog’s archives, you can trace his travels down various paths as he explored and conversed with other pilgrims along the way. His passion became to seek a “Jesus-shaped spirituality,” rather than one formed by a church he felt had abandoned that pursuit (“mere churchianity”).

As for me, I eventually found a liturgical/theological oasis in the mainline church, the ELCA Lutheran church to be exact. Nevertheless, to this day I still experience a high level of ecclesiastical discomfort and skepticism. I don’t really view myself as a “churchman” any longer. Though I accept my pastoral vocation, I mostly practice it in a community-wide ministry of chaplaincy rather than as a parish pastor. I do remain involved with a local congregation as an adjunct to my hospice and community work, and I find great joy in presiding at the Word and Table with a church family for a portion of each year. But I no longer have much interest in the workings of the institution, it structures, or its programs. So there remains a “wilderness” dimension to my life. I’m not only post-evangelical, but post-ecclesiastical. I still feel somewhat in exile, having known a “home” for many years only to find myself unexpectedly alienated from it and now, in many ways, opposed to what it represents.

At Internet Monk, we are post-evangelicals.

For further reading here at iMonk, I suggest these articles:

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Here are a few phrases that describe essential concepts from Internet Monk we’ll look at in more detail in days to come. If you have others you’d like me to write about, send me an email.

Wilderness journey
Mere churchianity
Jesus-shaped spirituality
The coming evangelical collapse
The gospel
Dangerous grace
Why we must not be “good” Christians
The “ordinary” life (contra “radical” Christianity)
Drawn to the religionless
Comforting the brokenhearted
What is the Bible? What is it for?
God’s good creation (Genesis, et al)
Tikkun olam and the human vocation
Shalom and the hope of new creation

Dr. Anthony Fauci discusses the coronavirus with Dr. Francis Collins

See this video for a discussion between Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci on COVID-19. Go and watch two people who know what they are talking about discuss this issue. Thanks to the BioLogos Forum for the hat tip. A couple of things I noted:

Dr. Collins asks Dr. Fauci about the current state of the pandemic. Fauci answers that it’s not good, premature reopening has caused a resurgence of the virus. We are still “knee-deep” in the first wave and now it’s surging upward.

Dr. Fauci recommends:

Wear a mask in public
Maintain physical distance from other people
Avoid crowds

Dr. Fauci wants to warn young people to take the pandemic seriously:

They can get very sick
They can contribute to the pandemic propagation if they are not careful.

Dr. Fauci is hopeful that by the end of the year a vaccine may be developed but they will not rush it. The vaccine must be both SAFE and EFFECTIVE.

They both stressed that the public health effort should not be viewed in opposition to the economic effort. The public health effort is a pathway to get to a safe reopening, not an obstacle.

Dr. Fauci concludes “Everybody hang in there, good science will come through for us.”

Wendell Berry: To care for what we know

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To care for what we know requires
care for what we don’t, the world’s lives dark in the soil,
dark in the dark.

Forbearance is the first care we give
to what we do not know. We live
by lives we don’t intend, lives
that exceed our thoughts and needs, outlast
our designs, staying by passing through,
surviving again and again the risky passages
from ice to warmth, dark to light.

Rightness of scale is our second care:
the willingness to think and work
within the limits of our competence
to do no permanent wrong to anything
of permanent worth to the earth’s life,
known or unknown, now or ever, never
destroying by knowledge, unknowingly,
what we do not know, so that the world
in its mystery, the known unknown world,
will live and thrive while we live.

And our competence to do no
permanent wrong to the land
is limited by the land’s competence
to suffer our ignorance, our errors,
and — provided the scale
is right — to recover, to be made whole.

• Wendell Berry
A Small Porch: Sabbath Poems 2014 and 2015

Mercy not Sacrifice (4): The Act that Counters Contempt

Mercy not Sacrifice (4): The Act that Counters Contempt

We are thinking through Richard Beck’s illuminating book, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. In our first post, we introduced his suggestion that disgust psychology can help explain the ways we view and treat other people. Do we view them through the lens of sacrifice — that is, with a purity filter that sets boundaries, excluding and even expelling those we deem “unclean”? Or, do we use the filter of mercy, which follows the impulse to welcome, leading us to cross boundaries, to set aside our natural “disgust” for that which is outside our bounds of “acceptable” and to invite the other to participate in relationship with us?

In post two, we looked at what it’s like to look through the purity filter, to see the world through the lens of clean vs. unclean. This “contagion logic” is concerned about contacting that which is unclean, even minute amounts of it. There is a sense that the unclean contaminates the clean, and therefore contact must be avoided. All the power is on the side of pollutant.

The third post we discussed how “core” disgust (related to oral incorporation) has other manifestations. In particular, we talked about “sociomoral” disgust: our reaction to people we deem contaminated and defiling. The church has always struggled to follow the example of Jesus, who welcomed the company of the “unclean,” with no hesitation about offending the cleanliness/purity traditions of the “righteous.”

Today, we share what Richard Beck says about an emotion closely related to disgust — contempt.

Contempt is generally distinguished from disgust in that it introduces a hierarchical component. Not only do we wrinkle our noses in contempt, we “look down our nose” at the people offending us. (p. 109)

As Beck notes, we may not think in terms of “clean” and “unclean.” However, we are all intimately acquainted with “the social tensions inherent in issues of hierarchy, status, and socioeconomic class” (p. 112) that are more precisely identified by the word “contempt.” He turns to the letter of 1st Corinthians for a case study of the problems that arise in the church because of sociomoral contempt and disdain. Problems in Corinth came into focus during their times of table fellowship, the communal meal that was associated with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

What was going on? The situation is clarified somewhat if we consider aspects of Roman dining practices. As Witherington discusses, it appears that the Corinthian church was treating its communal meal, eaten prior to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, as a private dinner party followed by a convivium (i.e., drinking party).

It was normal practice in Roman dinner and drinking parties to rank guests according to social status. Generally, high status guests ate with the host in a separate room where they were served first and were given the best food and drink. Lower status guests were seated elsewhere in the house, were served last, and were served food of lesser quality.

It appears that the wealthy patrons of the Corinthian church had imported these social practices into the life of the church. During the communal meal the church was segregated, with the wealthy Christians gathered in a separate room with the host. There, food was served (along with after-dinner drinking) with little regard as to the situation elsewhere in the house where the poorer Christians were being served, if at all. Further, the order of service had the wealthier patrons of the church eating first and well into their drinking party before lower-status members of the church had been served in the far reaches of the house. (pp. 117-118)

As I read this, my conversion from Bible-centric evangelical worship to traditional liturgical worship was completed. It is the Lord’s Table that is the center and most significant part of Christian worship. This is where all who come may share in the Lord’s presence and blessing. You might not understand the sermon, but you can come to the Table. The very purpose of the Table is to express the inclusion of the gospel. All are welcome. All are blessed.

In many ways [a Roman] meal was an occasion for gaining or showing social status. And it might be in many regards a microcosm of the aspirations and aims of the culture as a whole. Paul’s attempt to deconstruct the social stratification that was happening in the Lord’s Supper goes directly against the tendency of such meals . . . the sacred tradition concerning the Lord’s Supper is recited specifically to encourage social leveling, to overcome factionalism created by stratification and its expression at meals, and to create unity and harmony in the congregation. (Witherington, quoted by Beck, p. 119)

This is the act that conveys the good news: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. This is the welcome. And this is the act by which God condemns all our contempt for one another.

Views of God and the Corona Virus

Few things caused me to become more upset in the early days of the pandemic, than people stating their opinions about how God and the pandemic were related.

The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that these views reinforce what I wrote back in February of 2019 when I asked: “What on earth is a ‘Biblical Worldview’?”

Surely if there was such a thing as a “Biblical Worldview”, then there would be consensus on how God and the Corona Virus are interrelated.

But as Chaplain Mike noted, also back in February of 2019:

“Making the Bible the sole authority for the church has demonstrably not led to ecclesiastical unity formed around the clear teaching of scripture. Two groups may both hold to the authority of the Bible while coming to polar opposite conclusions with regard to how to interpret it. The Bible, as it has come to us, is just not that simple and easily understood. It is open to a plethora of interpretations, and the history of Protestant schism proves this convincingly.”

Michael Spencer had something similar to say in 2008:

So today the “Biblical Worldview” and “Biblical values” movement is busy hammering away and unity and simplicity by seeking to make sure that everyone who says they are a Christian has the same opinion on everything, votes the same way, worships the same way, talks the same way and consumes the same evangelical culture.

As I was exploring the topic of God and the Corona virus, I was struck by how different many of the Christian positions are. Others opinions are nuanced versions of the same thing. I was tempted to list out all the different views and offer critiques of each, but instead I think I will just leave you with some quotations under general headings, and give you a free-for-all in the comments to support or criticize the various views. Please use a modicum of respect when doing so, in order to keep the conversation civil.

Here is a summary of some of the different ideas that I read or heard:

God causes it as a punishment for sin…

“All natural disasters can ultimately be traced to sin.” Robert Jeffries

“God is the Lord of history; not a sparrow falls to the ground without His consent. Of course the coronavirus is a punishment from God: all our sufferings are the consequence of sin; for us sinners, they are a just penalty for our sin; and God has complete control over what happens and how it affects us. Both testaments of Scripture are full of examples of this, and it is equally fully reflected in the liturgy.” Joseph Shaw – Life Site News

A variant to this is God does not cause it but allows it. (Quite frankly in the end I don’t really see the difference between the two.)

God causes/allows it for both judgement and to send a message…

All natural disasters — whether floods, famines, locusts, tsunamis, or diseases — are a thunderclap of divine mercy in the midst of judgment, calling all people everywhere to repent and realign their lives. John Piper

God is not using it for judgement but has a message for us in it…

“You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others.” Pope Francis

God causes it to send a message (judgement not necessarily implied)…

Nearly two-thirds of religious Americans feel the coronavirus pandemic is “God telling humanity to change the way we are living,” according to the study.
That statement held more truth for black and Hispanic Americans — 73% of which and 65% of which said they agreed. About 48% of white Americans concurred. – Charlotte Observer

God has caused or allowed it for an unknown purpose…

God is sovereign. There is a reason for this coronavirus. Ultimately that may or may not be revealed to us. – Family member

God protects us from it…

More than half of the respondents polled also said they believed God would protect them from infection. – Charlotte Observer

There is a meaning that can be found in it…

At almost the same time as my near-fatal heart attack, my sister lost her (just) married 22-year-old daughter to a malignant brain tumor. If I am going to thank God for my recovery—as I do—what shall I say about God to my sister? And what shall I say about God when it comes to a pandemic like coronavirus, where we can see no positive dimension whatsoever, only unrelieved disaster?…

Perhaps the coronavirus might function as a huge loudspeaker, reminding us of the ultimate statistic: that one out of every one of us dies. If this induces us to look to the God we may have ignored for years, but who wore a crown of thorns in order to bring us back into relationship with Him and into a new, unfractured world beyond death, then the coronavirus, in spite of the havoc it has wreaked, will have served a very healthy purpose. – John Lennox

Incidentally, this is the same author whose statements about Biblical worldviews prompted my post in 2019.

God is not the author of it…

The argument that suffering is a punishment for sins, a still common approach among some believers (who usually say that God punishes people or groups that they themselves disapprove of) [makes God out to be a monster]. But Jesus himself rejects that approach when he meets a man who is blind, in a story recounted in the Gospel of John: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” says Jesus. This is Jesus’s definitive rejection of the image of the monstrous Father. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus responds to the story of a stone tower that fell and crushed a crowd of people: “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.” – Father James Martin

God is with us through this as one who suffered in the form of Jesus…
This is my own personal view. I will be elaborating on it at length… next week.

The Corona virus is a response from the Earth (as a quasi God) rebelling against what we have done to her…

I had been sent a video my an Internet Monk reader who agreed with the message of the video. I have lost the link, but it wasn’t too hard to find others with similar views:

Idris Elba has suggested the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is the planet’s response to being “damaged” by humanity.

The Luther star recently revealed he tested positive for the virus and has been self-isolating with his wife, Sabrina Dhowre, who also tested positive.

In a video interview with Oprah Winfrey, the 47-year-old said it was “really obvious” to him that the outbreak is Earth’s response to being mistreated by humans.

God is a tool to be wielded by those opposed to our beliefs on it…
I don’t have a ready quote for this, but I talked about it at length last week. I would be interested in reading in the comments how you have seen this one played out.

So that sums up a number of the things I have been reading about God and the Corona Virus. As usual, your thoughts and comments are welcome. I look forward to an invigorating discussion!

Mercy not Sacrifice (3): Of naked savages and crucified thieves

Unclean Kitchen. Photo by darkday at Flickr. Creative Commons License

In post two, we looked at what it’s like to look through the purity filter, to see the world through the lens of clean vs. unclean. This “contagion logic” is concerned about contacting that which is unclean, even minute amounts of it. There is a sense that the unclean contaminates the clean, and therefore contact must be avoided. All the power is on the side of pollutant.

Disgust psychology starts with the core element of food, “the psychology of oral incorporation.” It protects us from taking things into our bodies that poisonous or otherwise harmful. But disgust moves into other realms of life, like the “sociomoral” disgust that is the focus of this book. Beck cites the example of Charles Darwin, in a quote that shows the movement between the two:

In Tierra del Fuego a native touched with his finger some cold preserved meat which I was eating at our bivouac, and plainly showed disgust at its softness; whilst I felt utter disgust at my food being touched by a naked savage, though his hands did not appear dirty. (pp. 73-74)

Note how Darwin is revolted by the man who made contact with Darwin’s food. The man is described as a “native” — the scientist views him as part of another group. Darwin also calls him a “naked savage.” Note how the man is diminished to something less than fully human by these words. Darwin sees himself higher on the evolutionary scale than this “savage.” His “naked” appearance only further confirms the scientist’s judgment that this man has no business touching Darwin’s food. It’s disgusting to him. He can see with eyes that the man’s hands are clean, but his revulsion about who the man is overwhelms any rational evaluation. For this “human,” who is viewed as “less than human,” to touch Darwin’s food is viewed as disgusting, perhaps toxic.

To Charles Darwin, this “naked savage” was like the “tax collectors and sinners” in Matthew 9.

The problem was that a class of people—“tax collectors and sinners”—were understood to be, intrinsically, a form of pollution. Strongly, these people were waste, contaminants, vectors of contagion. Thus, contact with these persons was prohibited if one wanted to maintain a stance of holiness and purity. (p. 75).

Beck relates this to the story of Peter in Acts 9-10. He notes how, even with the consistent example and teaching of Jesus, the problem of sociomoral disgust continued to hurt the early church.

It is clear in Acts 10 that the gospel message was not making its way into the larger Gentile world because uncircumcised Gentiles were regarded as a source of sociomoral contamination. Given this crisis God moves decisively in Acts 10, arranging a meeting between Peter, the Jew, and Cornelius, the Gentile. In a vision to Peter, God dismantles Peter’s sociomoral disgust psychology.

…Peter’s vision of unclean animals is an excellent illustration of the psychology of disgust and nicely illustrates how core and sociomoral disgust fuse and mix, just as we saw in Darwin’s story. When asked to eat the “unclean” animals, core disgust is the presenting problem for Peter. That is, issues of food and food-aversions are being discussed. But the issue, Peter eventually discovers, is not about contaminated food, it’s about contaminated people. Core disgust is the surface level problem, but sociomoral disgust is the deeper issue. What is striking about this story, in light of the empirical work on disgust, is how psychologically sophisticated it is, how disgust is being uprooted at its psychological base. In Peter’s vision God dismantles the contamination boundary between Jew and Gentile so that the gospel message could break forth into the entire world. (p. 76-77)

One way of describing Jesus-shaped spirituality is to say that Jesus consistently favored the prophetic tradition over the priestly tradition in Israel — viewing people through the filter of mercy rather than the purity impulse.

However, it took the church a long time to start getting this. To be honest, we still haven’t gotten this. Two weeks ago I wrote a piece about how our understanding of “grace,” limiting it as a concept about individual soteriology, led us away from seeing “grace” as God’s act of “inclusion.” In grace, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Per John Barclay, grace in the NT is “about communities that crossed ethnic, social, and cultural boundaries,” welcoming people formerly viewed as unclean, not to be touched.

Grace was Jesus, becoming incarnate, reaching out to people throughout his life and ministry, with no hesitation about offending the cleanliness/purity traditions of the “righteous.” His death was the ultimate act of inclusion. There Jesus identified with all humans, joining them in their death. Furthermore, he specifically represented the least of humans on the cross, crucified between two thieves, himself considered a blasphemous criminal.

No more “disgusting” scene can be imagined than that. From this we should learned, as Peter did, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean” (Acts 20:28).

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: Independence Day 2020 Edition

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: Independence Day 2020 Edition

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2020 is the perfect time to hear again the greatest speech in American history…

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war–seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

• President Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural (March 4, 1865)

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Welcome to the Freedom Cafe!

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A lament for the USA, 2020, by David Brooks…

We Americans enter the July 4 weekend of 2020 humiliated as almost never before. We had one collective project this year and that was to crush Covid-19, and we failed.

On Wednesday, we had about 50,000 new positive tests, a record. Other nations are beating the disease while our infection lines shoot upward as sharply as they did in March.

This failure will lead to other failures. A third of Americans show signs of clinical anxiety or depression, according to the Census Bureau. Suspected drug overdose deaths surged by 42 percent in May. Small businesses, colleges and community hubs will close.

At least Americans are not in denial about the nation’s turmoil of the last three months. According to a Pew survey, 71 percent of Americans are angry about the state of the country right now and 66 percent are fearful. Only 17 percent are proud.

…What’s the core problem? Damon Linker is on to a piece of it: “It amounts to a refusal on the part of lots of Americans to think in terms of the social whole — of what’s best for the community, of the common or public good. Each of us thinks we know what’s best for ourselves.”

I’d add that this individualism, atomism and selfishness is downstream from a deeper crisis of legitimacy. In 1970, in a moment like our own, Irving Kristol wrote, “In the same way as men cannot for long tolerate a sense of spiritual meaninglessness in their individual lives, so they cannot for long accept a society in which power, privilege, and property are not distributed according to some morally meaningful criteria.”

A lot of people look around at the conditions of this country — how Black Americans are treated, how communities are collapsing, how Washington doesn’t work — and none of it makes sense. None of it inspires faith, confidence. In none of it do they feel a part.

If you don’t breathe the spirit of the nation, if you don’t have a fierce sense of belonging to each other, you’re not going to sacrifice for the common good. We’re confronted with a succession of wicked problems and it turns out we’re not even capable of putting on a friggin’ mask.

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Appreciation for “The Black National Anthem”

From NPR: “”Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first written as a poem. Created by James Weldon Johnson, it was performed for the first time by 500 school children in celebration of President Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12, 1900 in Jacksonville, FL. The poem was set to music by Johnson’s brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and soon adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its official song. Today “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is one of the most cherished songs of the African American Civil Rights Movement and is often referred to as the Black National Anthem.”

This year, it is possible that more people than ever will hear this anthem, because the National Football League has said that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” will be played or performed live before every Week 1 NFL game, as the league considers various ways to recognize victims of systemic racism throughout their season.

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray

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What to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July? (Frederick Douglass, 1852)

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

…Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

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Members of the Mississippi Honor Guard lower the state flag at the state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, on July 1, 2020, a day after a bill that would replace the state flag, which includes a Confederate emblem, was signed into law. (Suzi Altman/Reuters)

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Not too many personal “4th of July” songs better than this one…

Sandy, the aurora is rising behind us
This pier lights our carnival life forever
Oh, love me tonight and I promise I’ll love you forever…

IM Recommended Viewing: Hamilton

IM Recommended Viewing: Hamilton

Legacy. What is a legacy?
It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see
I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me
America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me
You let me make a difference
A place where even orphan immigrants
Can leave their fingerprints and rise up…

• from “The World Was Wide Enough”
Songwriters: Lin-Manuel Miranda/Khary Kimani Turner/Christopher E. Martin

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Tonight, Disney+ will air a film version of the Broadway hit “Hamilton” in honor of Independence Day. A lot of people have been swept up in the Hamilton phenomenon over the past several years, but I myself have never had the chance to see it on stage. I think (hope) this will be a timely and encouraging performance for a country mired in discouragement, conflict, and chaos here in 2020.

HERE is more information about how to watch.

To whet your appetite, here is an excerpt from the 2016 Tony Awards, at which Hamilton garnered a remarkable 16 nominations in 13 categories, winning 11 awards.

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And here is the official Disney+ trailer:

Facemasks Revisited

Facemasks Revisited

The wearing of a face mask when in public continues to be a matter of controversy. A video of a man trying to force himself past a Walmart employee in Florida has gone viral. A women in Ventura County California castigates county council members for requiring masks saying she refuses to wear a mask because she is “not a terrorist” and “not a sex slave”.

I work at the Indiana Government Center (North), and the policy of wearing a mask has been instituted. My particular department (Indiana Department of Environmental Management) has stated a policy of wearing masks unless you are in your own personal cube. And yet some people refuse to wear the mask. The commissioner of IDEM “strongly encourages” the policy, but has stated the policy will not be enforced by dismissal or other disciplinary measures.

What is going on that this issue has become so fractious? As this Wired article notes:

THE RECENT BACK-AND-FORTH debate—and policy reversal—over the use of face masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19 reveals a glaring double standard. For some reason, we’ve been treating this one particular matter of public health differently. We don’t see op-eds that ask whether people really need to keep 6 feet away from each other on the street, as opposed to 3 feet, or that cast doubt on whether it’s such a good idea to promote bouts of handwashing that are 20 seconds long. But when it comes to covering our faces, a scholarly hyper-rigor has been applied.

Part of the problem is that for months, the federal government has recommended that the general public not wear masks, in part to help preserve them for health care workers. Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until now has said the general public did not need to wear masks unless they came into contact with coronavirus patients or if they were sick. But the CDC has reversed itself recently and recommended the general public SHOULD wear masks. Such reversals from the “experts” always results in a lot of public hoopla. Although, if someone is an “expert” why wouldn’t we expect them to change their mind in the light of new information? Isn’t that what good scientists are supposed to do?

Here’s the problem – the research literature on mask usage doesn’t provide definitive answers. There are no large-scale clinical trials proving that personal use of masks can prevent pandemic spread; and the ones that look at masks and influenza have produced equivocal results. The scientific basis for health care workers using masks doesn’t come from clinical trials of influenza outbreaks or pandemics. It comes from laboratory simulations showing that masks can prevent viral particles from getting through.

This article, in Ars Technica , summarizes the current level of research on the efficacy of mask wearing. This article in BetterHumans summarizes the data rather well for the layman.

Despite all this seeming equivocation on the part of public health scientists, a clear consensus has emerged; and this is the key point I wish to emphasize. The consensus is that even simple cloth masks are effective in minimizing the transmission of the virus if the wearer is infected.

The fact that someone can be asymptomatic and still a transmitter of the virus makes this a very important, if not vital, point. One of the argumentative points the Ventura county women was making was that she was a “healthy American” and so didn’t need to wear a mask. The problem is that she had no way of knowing that for certain, even if she had been tested recently. One can be infected and transmissive for up to two weeks or more before symptoms become obvious. No one can see the virus and no one knows at which point they become a danger to people around them. That is why it is necessary for YOU to wear a mask in public.

If you disagree with me, and think you have some constitutional right to infect your neighbors, then answer me this: If you needed surgery, would you want the doctors and nurses on your surgical team to be masked or not?

Don’t be a hypocrite. Especially if you profess to be a Christian. Shouldn’t you be obeying Philippians 2:3-4?

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Even Republican allies of Trump and right-leaning news pundits, seeing the surge in corona virus cases, have agreed that wearing a mask is prudent public policy.

Because, as noted in the Philippians verses quoted above, it is a vain conceit for you not to wear a mask in public. There is really no good reason not to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Be a good neighbor.

Put the mask on.

Wednesday with Michael Spencer: Just a guy with a life

Wednesday with Michael Spencer
Just a guy with a life (excerpt from Chronicle of the Journey, 2008)

I’m a fifty one year old guy whose days leading churches in his denomination are probably over, whose wife got burned out in the non-existent “spirituality” of 30+ years of Baptist church life and ministry, who has been at his current job long enough for some people to wish he wasn’t, who has been stationed out on the frontier where there are no churches to shop, who spent so many years thinking so many things in his head were scriptural, reformed and right that it really hurts to have to admit he was wrong, wrong and wrong. In that order.

I’m just a guy with a life, and life is full of failure and loss. I wanted MINISTRY to be the ongoing reward. I wanted USEFULNESS to be my satisfaction. I wanted to be SIGNIFICANT. I wanted the contract to be in place and the insurance to protect me because I was the guy with the Bible. Well, that didn’t go very well, did it?

God thought it was time for all that nonsense to stop, and for the lifelong addiction I’d developed to my church as my universe, my wife as unquestioning supporter and my theology as my version of the inerrant Word of God to end. He made an appointment to pull the teeth, and I was not consulted in advance.

Ordinary life, extraordinary events and stuff that just don’t make no sense all combine to rearrange the furniture of my world. Every time I head for a comfortable seat, God sells it. Every time I look for the comfort food, the fridge is empty. Every time I get out my copy of “Things You KNOW Are True,” the dog has eaten it.

My faith continues. Jesus now fills the picture in a way he didn’t before. I realize I have a lot to learn from simple people who never get into pulpits and who aren’t supposed to know everything in the Bible like I supposedly do. My love for my wife and our Christian marriage continues, and there is much good that was not there before. I returned to church today, alone- something that in my anger I said I wouldn’t do. I was reminded that here I won’t ever be turned away from the table. I prayed for the five who were baptized. I was reminded that the faith goes far beyond me, my time, my preferences and my lifetime. I looked, and there were the people of God, and I was one of them. They asked me to lead in prayer, and the words were more careful than before.

I was grateful. I talked to Jesus and he told me it is all going to be all right, that I’m free to walk the new path as I can, and he will not leave me or forsake me. I felt sorry for my sin, and happy to know my Savior loves me.

Life goes on. Losses, gains, light, shadow, confusion, laughter, tears, God, Jesus, Denise, me.

When I look up from the road, I notice that the lights in the distance are closer and the noise behind me is not as loud.

Good journey friends. See you on up the road.