A Continuing Survey of Religion and Public
Life
Richard John Neuhaus
Copyright (c)
1996 First Things 63 (May 1996): 72-88.
This Month:
Against Christian Politics
An election year does strange things to people. For instance, Father
John Kavanaugh's helpful homiletical reflections in America are
usually about the scriptural text for the Sunday. But he, too, succumbs
to the quadrennial political itches when confronted by the Sermon on the
Mount, and he offers to his preacher readers a little tract on
"Christian Faith and Politics." Among the homiletical inspirations:
"Imagine the irony of a Christian political movement that along with
public prayer trumpets the priorities of military security, tax cuts for
the well-to-do, and capital punishment." A bit uneasy about the hint of
partisanship in that political swipe, he writes, "This is not a put-down
of any particular political party, even though, at first sight, it may
seem so." At first sight and at as many other sights as you may care to
give it.
"A Representative [Henry] Hyde," Fr. Kavanaugh writes, "is very
Christian in his defense of unborn babies, but I wonder what he thinks
of capital punishment, capital gains, and military adventures." I cannot
imagine that Hyde or any other sensible person is in favor of military
"adventures," but I would not be surprised if he views capital
punishment as a sometimes regrettably necessary means to protect
society, and thinks capital gains taxes drag down the economy, thereby
hurting everybody, especially the poor. Those positions are perfectly
permissible in Catholic moral teaching. Support for killing unborn
babies is not.
Protecting his nonpartisan credentials, Fr. Kavanaugh notes that Senator
Ted Kennedy is "a great defender of women and the poor" but he
criticizes Kennedy's support for abortion. The conclusion is
inescapable: the Republican Hydes and Democrat Kennedys are more or less
morally equivalent, except that the Hydes take a non-Christian position
on a lot of things while the Kennedys fall short on only one. Never mind
that Catholic teaching solemnly declares abortion to be an "unspeakable
crime," while the points on which Fr. Kavanaugh disagrees with the Hydes
are matters of prudential judgment on which people of equal Christian
commitment might legitimately disagree.
If we take the Sermon on the Mount seriously, says Fr. Kavanaugh, we
must all admit "how readily we compromise the revolutionary message of
Jesus." Who would dare to deny it? But then he leaves us with this
edifying thought: "Upon that admission, we might then discover a
Christian politics that illumines the world far more brilliantly than
the dim ideologies we guide our lives by." Admittedly, some ideologies
are dimmer than others, but a "Christian politics"?
One is reminded of Fr. Kavanaugh's fellow Jesuit, the late Fr. John
Courtney Murray. Asked by a politician how he could base his political
philosophy on the Sermon on the Mount, Fr. Murray incredulously
responded, "What on earth makes you think that a Catholic political
philosophy is based on the Sermon on the Mount?" He explained for the
thousandth time that a political philosophy has to do with the virtue of
justice as discerned by reason and directed by the virtue of prudence.
Similarly, the great Protestant teacher Reinhold Niebuhr devoted his
life to warning against the dangerous sentimentality of a "Christian
politics." Love compels Christians to seek justice also through
politics, Niebuhr insisted, but we must never equate our penultimate
judgments about what might serve justice with the ultimate truth that
impels us to seek and serve justice in the first place. In sum, we must
never declare our politics to be "Christian politics," thereby
implicitly excommunicating those Christians who disagree with us.
We Have Been Here Before
I would not pick on Fr. Kavanaugh, who, as I say, usually does not
ride his political hobby horse in public. But his mindset is
representative of a widespread and growing phenomenon on both the left
and the right-the religionizing of politics and politicizing of
religion. In recent American history, it started on the left in the
aftermath of the mainline churches' moral euphoria in having been so
very right about the early civil rights movement of Martin Luther King,
Jr. In the years that followed, that euphoria inflated the moral
certitude of those churches, and their bureaucracies were soon
pronouncing God's definite opinion on almost every question in public
dispute.
That could not last very long, and it didn't. After a while the members
of those churches turned a deaf ear to their leaders, and then began
drifting away, leaving mainline Protestantism in a spiral of decline
that has yet to hit bottom. Still on the left, something similar is
happening in Catholicism as the bishops are inclined to generously loan
their teaching authority to the church-and-society curia of the United
States Catholic Conference. Analysts of the mainline declension of the
last thirty years watch this Catholic development with an eerie sense of
having been here before.
Of course the more publicly potent religionizing of politics is today on
the right of the ideological spectrum. Conservative leaders regularly
say that they are only doing what the religious left did for decades,
indeed going all the way back to the Social Gospel movement at the turn
of the century. They're right about that, and that's what should worry
them. The conflation of Christian faith with a specific political agenda
inevitably leads to the distortion of faith. The equally inevitable
failure to achieve something worthy of being called "Christian politics"
produces a crisis in which people will feel forced to choose between
their politics and their faith. Devotion to "God and country" is a fine
thing, but when the two are given equal standing "country" will always
fall far short of what people hope for and they will then find
themselves faced with the prospect of "God or country."
For organizations such as the unhappily named Christian Coalition, that
prospect may not be far off. How many electoral setbacks will it take to
undermine the relentless triumphalism necessary to sustaining such a
political insurgency? When the disillusioned despair of achieving a
Christian politics in a Christian America, "God and country" might very
quickly become "God or country." Most will choose for God, no doubt, but
we should not be surprised if there are others for whom the "Christian"
in the Christian Coalition is subservient to the political goals of the
enterprise. The more seriously Christian, on the other hand, may think
it necessary to choose for God against further political engagement. The
result could be a return to the political passivity that marked
evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity during most of this century.
Not inconceivably, profound disillusionment could also produce a much
more radicalized "Christian politics" on the right, a politics aimed at
dismantling what is believed to be an incorrigibly evil constitutional
order.
The last possibility is more than hinted at in movements that go by
names such as Christian Reconstructionism and Dominion Theology. Such
movements, with their assertion that America must be refounded on the
basis of "Bible law," claim relatively few adherents today, but they are
waiting in the wings, alert to their opportunity when enough Christians
decide that it is not possible "to work within the system." Once again,
there is an eerie sense of having been here before. Except the last
time, in the 1960s, these questions preoccupied a left that thought
itself to be in revolutionary ascendancy.
A Different Victory
Do not misunderstand. I sympathize with most of the stated
positions of the Christian Coalition. That is not the question. The
question is the conflation of Christian faith and political agenda. I
have even spoken at the annual "Road to Victory" conference of the
Coalition. I pleaded that, while there may be welcome achievements from
time to time, Christians are called to walk not the road to political
victory but the way of the cross. The speech met with a great ovation,
maybe because it's the kind of thing Christians are expected to say, but
I have very limited confidence that most of those who cheered understood
what I was trying to say. Afterward, one participant, on the edge of
tears, said he felt betrayed. It was my writings, he said, that had led
him to become politically engaged, and now I was telling him that he had
made a mistake. That is not the point. That is not the point at all.
Psalm 146 warns, "Put not your trust in princes." Even when they are
your princes and you think you put them on their little thrones.
Especially when they are your princes, because that is when the
temptation arises to invest your soul and your highest allegiance in
their rule. No politics can liberate us from the limits of a fallen
creation. We can probe and press at the limits, but the politics for
which we were made, the politics that is the right ordering of all
things, the politics of the Sermon on the Mount, will, short of the
Kingdom, always elude us. Liberation theology-whether of the Marxist or
the Reconstructionist variety-is idolatry.
Christian political engagement is an endlessly difficult subject. Our
Lord said to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's,
but he did not accommodate us by spelling out the details. Over two
thousand years, Christians have again and again thought they got the mix
just right, only to have it blow up in their faces-and, not so
incidentally, in the faces of others. We're always having to go back to
the drawing board, which is to say, to first things. Even when,
especially when, we are most intensely engaged in the battle, first
things must be kept first in mind. It is not easy but it is imperative.
It profits us nothing if we win all the political battles while losing
our own souls.
Alien Citizens
A very long time ago, when Christians were a persecuted minority of
maybe fifty thousand in the great empire of Rome, an anonymous writer
explained to a pagan named Diognetus the way it is with this peculiar
people. Until Our Lord returns in glory, Christians do well to embrace
the second century "Letter to Diognetus" as their vade mecum:
"For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race
by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their
own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an
eccentric manner of life. This doctrine of theirs has not been
discovered by the ingenuity or deep thought of inquisitive men, nor do
they put forward a merely human teaching, as some people do. Yet,
although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each man's
lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and
food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof
of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own
commonwealth. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They
have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as
foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them
every fatherland is a foreign land. They marry, like everyone else, and
they beget children, but they do not cast out their offspring. They
share their board with each other, but not their marriage bed. It is
true that they are 'in the flesh,' but they do not live 'according to
the flesh.' They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in
heaven."
It is an awkward posture, being an alien citizen. It poses irresolvable
problems for both "God and country" and "God or country." Christians
critically affirm their responsibility for the politics of the earthly
city, knowing all the while that their true polis is the City of God.
Loyalty to the earthly city is joined to an allegiance that others who
do not share that allegiance cannot help but view as subversive. It is
as with Thomas More on the scaffold, "I die the king's good servant, but
God's first." And, had Henry only known it, Thomas was the king's better
servant because he served God first. Like so many others over the
centuries, Henry had a "Christian politics" that demanded a totality of
allegiance that no alien citizen could render him.
Where We Are Left
Christians are commanded to love their neighbors, and politics is
one way-by no means the most important way-of doing that. In a
democracy, everybody is asked to accept a measure of political
responsibility, and most do. For some it is their life's work, as in
"vocation." Like everything worth doing, it is worth doing well. And,
for those who are called to do it, even when they frequently fail, it is
also worth doing poorly. Christians engaged in politics, we may hope,
will bring to the task the gifts of personal integrity and devotion to
the common good. But that does not make their engagement "Christian
politics." It is still just politics. A Christian engineer who builds a
really good bridge has not built a "Christian bridge." The merit of the
project depends upon qualities pertinent to the "bridgeness" of the
thing, although we may believe that those qualities are well served by
the Christian conviction and integrity of the builder.
So where does this leave us with the Sermon on the Mount? Deeply
troubled, for sure. It leaves us, against our sinful inclination,
attending to a "preferential option" for the poor and the sorrowful, the
meek and the persecuted. Attending to them not by politics chiefly but
by politics also. That sermon depicts a way of living that Niebuhr
variously called an "impossible possibility" and "possible
impossibility," with the one never being entirely overcome by the other.
Yet the never is not forever, for, above all, it leaves us alien
citizens with an insatiable longing for that other polis He told us
about, when all those around the throne and the angels numbering myriads
of myriads declare with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and
blessing!"
And then, around the throne of the Lamb, we will have reason to hope
that all our efforts, including our political efforts, did not get in
the way of, and maybe even anticipated in some small part, that right
ordering of all things that is the only politics deserving of the name
Christian. Until then, talk about "Christian politics"-whether of the
left or of the right or of ideologies as yet unimagined-is but a refusal
to wait for the Kingdom. It is the delusion that we Christians are
called to be or can be, in our exile from the heavenly polis, something
other than the poor in spirit, the sorrowing, the meek, the hungry, the
merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted-to be, in
sum, something other than those whom the Sermon on the Mount calls
blessed.
The Uneasy Ghost of Karl Marx
It's easy to make fun of academics who haven't heard the news that Marx
is dead. Perhaps too easy, suggests Michael Ignatieff in his review of
Frank E. Manuel's A Requiem for Karl Marx (Harvard University
Press). In the last few years it has become respectable to write about
the seamier side of Marx, a subject long avoided except by those awful
anti-Communists. Ignatieff writes: "As a study in the psychology of
loathing, Manuel's biography is truly first-rate. Marx despised most
everyone: his mother, Jews, black and Asiatic peoples, Poles and other
lesser Europeans, most fellow revolutionaries, all bourgeois
politicians, as well as the bailiffs and the bill-collectors who
tormented his penurious exile. The correspondence with Engels drips with
scorn for 'niggers,' 'Juden,' and the 'Dreck and Scheisse' of the
Socialist International. The German socialist leader Ferdinand Lassalle
earned the ultimate compliment: 'Jewish nigger.'" At the same time,
Ignatieff is not persuaded by Manuel that Marx's self-loathing had all
that much to do with his Jewishness. For us, says Ignatieff, Marx's
being a Jew was critical to his identity, but perhaps it was no big deal
for Marx himself. He had a kindly, if condescending, relationship with
his father, who had converted to Lutheranism.
While Marx-bashing may be on the edge of becoming fashionable, Ignatieff
thinks there are reasons for his enduring appeal to some intellectuals.
"If Marx will enjoy another afterlife, it will not be his particular
doctrines themselves, but his larger intellectual project, his
incredible ambition, which will provide the inspiration. What is so
striking about the post-Marxist intellectual situation is the general
theoretical silence about causation in history, the conceptual timidity,
the refusal to even engage with the question of what general causes-
demographic, technological, economic-determine the broad trends of our
future. Analysis has been replaced by futurology, as in Alvin Toffler,
or by academicism, as in Immanuel Wallerstein. At the very least, Marx
was not shy of ultimate formulations. His theory was grand."
As numerous writers have concluded over the years, the attraction of
Marxism is quasi-religious. Ignatieff observes: "Nowadays as every
discipline retreats into the contemplation of its particulars and all
engage in the forswearing of synoptic ambition, as philosophy gives way
to irony, the Marxian project seems more tonic and even more difficult
to contemplate. It is important to see that the human longing for the
big picture will not disappear." The utopians of this century who have
hitched a political program to their Explanation of Everything, and have
along the way perpetrated atrocities beyond measure, are temporarily
discredited. But it is only temporary. Another Explanation of Everything
will surely come along, and we should not be surprised if it is
ghostwritten by that self-loathing, inexhaustibly
resentful dreamer of bizarre dreams, the unhappy madman Karl Marx.
And Now For Something Truly Eerie
"Insidious." "Sinister." "Chilling." These are some of the words used to
describe Care of the Spitfire Grill, which was the big hit at
this year's Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. So what's wrong
with the film? There's nothing at all wrong with the film itself,
according to almost everybody who saw it. It is a wonderful film that
moved viewers to laughter and tears. The insidious, sinister, chilling
factor has to do with its financing. It was sponsored by an order of
Catholic priests who created the Sacred Heart League to advance "Judeo-
Christian values" through film.
In two long stories in the New YorkTimes, film critic Caryn James
explores the meaning of this sinister connection. The film finally was
bought by a major production company, she reports, but others turned it
down after learning about its financial backing. Everyone agrees that
Spitfire Grill does not proselytize and does not ostensibly
promote an ideology, but, as one film executive said, "If you know the
context of the financing, an agenda does emerge in the film." The story
continues: "'I was sitting in the theater when I read this statement of
purpose [of the Sacred Heart League] and my jaw dropped,' said Bingham
Ray, a partner in October Films. 'It sent a slight chill; that was the
collective reaction.'"
In her second story, James notes that "the manipulatively heartwarming
story about a young woman just out of prison who finds spiritual
redemption in Maine" won the festival's feature film Audience Award.
Contradicting her earlier story, she writes, "Nobody seemed to notice
that it was financed by a conservative Mississippi company affiliated
with the Roman Catholic Church and founded, as its 'mission statement'
puts it, to 'present the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition.'"
Conservative yet! Southern yet! Roman Catholic yet! You just have to
know that great evil is afoot. Whatever the film's merits, says James,
"watching it with the Sacred Heart League in mind makes all the biblical
imagery seem slightly sinister." Biblical imagery by itself might be
harmless enough, it seems, but here it is being employed by people who
probably think it has something to do with the truth.
Caryn James continues: "The director, Lee David Zlotoff, is Jewish and,
he says, extremely religious. But the movie's multidenominational roots-
Catholic backers, Protestant characters, and a Jewish director-don't
diminish the eerie sense that viewers are being proselytized without
their knowledge." Eerie indeed. So are we to think Hollywood and the
New York Times-not just Caryn James, for somebody at the paper
approves of her and others taking zillions of column inches to vent
their bigotry-are antireligious? Can one imagine a hit film being
declared sinister and insidious only because of its source of funding-
whether that source be casino owners, drug traffickers, cigarette
manufacturers, or arms merchants? An instance of that happening does not
come readily to mind. Religion is in a class by itself.
In the cultural world of Caryn James, religion-Catholic, Protestant, and
Jewish-is alien and suspect. As is the intent to advance "Judeo-
Christian values." It is all the more threatening when it takes care not
to proselytize because then people "are being proselytized without their
knowledge." The articles by Caryn James stand out only because they are
more vulger than usual in declaring the dominant antireligious prejudice
of Hollywood and the media, a prejudice that has given rise to what is
inevitably called a culture war. And that has contributed, happily, to
the decline of the circulation of the Times and of the audience
for Hollywood movies.
We can look forward to the release of Spitfire Grill, and hope
that it is not so inhibited in making a moral and spiritual point as Ms.
James says. Its smashing success at the box office may have a salutary
and collective chilling effect upon Hollywood producers. And maybe not,
for, as Ms. James makes clear, that is a world driven more by ideology
and prejudice than by the relatively innocent desire to make money.
When Vice Was Splendid
Surveying the Republican field back in February, the editors of the
Weekly Standard lament the absence of those who might have run,
notably Colin Powell, Dan Quayle, William Bennett, and Jack Kemp.
"Perhaps Dole will rebound and win. Perhaps Gramm or Alexander will
emerge against a weakened Dole and a Forbes whose fortunes begin to
flag. But what a pity that so many qualified, capable men-ones whose
lives ought to have prepared them for this endeavor-chose to leave the
field to those now running. A healthy democracy requires grand political
ambition among those who would be its leaders. We may not be at the end
of history, but we do seem perilously close to the end of such
ambition."
Recall St. Augustine's reflections in The City of God on the
ambition for glory in the Roman empire. The Romans called such striving
for glory a virtue, but Augustine deemed it a "splendid vice." Such
ambition, he said, is nothing but the vice of pride, albeit a very big
vice that keeps many smaller vices in check. In our circumstance, it is
not evident that pride does even that. The American people may not get
the candidates that they deserve, but they get the candidates this
nominating process can produce.
Writing in the same issue of the Standard, Alan Ehrenhalt says,
"No nominating system is guaranteed to produce good Presidents. The
process that created Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt also
created Warren Harding. The circus we are engaging in now may yet serve
up a statesman. It is impossible to be sure. What can be said with
confidence is that the present system comes close to screening out
conservatives of a particular temperament and attitude toward life.
Taft's traditionalism, Eisenhower's caution, Stevenson's tragic
perspective-all are bound to be scarce in a politics of self-nomination
and compulsive Solutionism." Given the problems facing the country and
world, says Ehrenhalt, candidates who possess "an instinctive caution
and respect for consensus would be reassuringly appropriate."
Reviewing Richard Brookhiser's new book on George Washington
(Founding Father), Edmund Morgan of Yale writes: "Washington
seems to have been born with a thirst for public respect of a special
kind. He wanted nothing more than honor, and he had identified its
ingredients so clearly that he knew he would miss getting it if he
showed himself wanting it as badly as he did." A long slide from
Washington, but still to the point, one recalls Walter Mondale saying he
did not have the "fire in the belly" to overcome the prospect of
sleeping in a thousand motels on the primary trail. And George Bush
expressing honest puzzlement that people were skeptical of the patrician
view that the political life is a matter of offering oneself for "public
service."
Today's nomination ordeal is designed for the self-promoters, and for
such it is not an ordeal but an orgy. Honorable people may submit
themselves to it because they honestly want to serve, but it was not
designed for them. We are told that jumping through the primary hoops
tests the mettle of candidates, but it is not clear that it tests for
any gift pertinent to being a good President, while it very likely does
corrupt such gifts. The old saw may again be vindicated, the one that
says God looks out for children, drunks, and the American people. But so
far this year has produced nothing to challenge Augustine's insight that
the governance of the earthly city is driven by vice-what the Standard
calls "grand political ambition" that is anything but grand. If
Augustine is right, and I have no doubt he is, that is the way it will
always be short of the sure establishment of the City of God. Yet one
cannot help but wish that the vice were just a bit more splendid.
A Possible Protestantism, Perhaps
"Protestantism now faces the most difficult struggle of all the
occidental religions and denominations in the present world situation."
So wrote the very influential Paul Tillich almost fifty years ago in
The Protestant Era. Douglas John Hall of McGill University
takes up Tillich's challenge, noting that he, like Tillich, is referring
to "classic" or "mainline" Protestantism. He says that there are those
who, like Peter Berger, question whether Protestantism's "culture
religion" ever did internalize the theology of the Reformation. While
Hall admits the question is valid, and well knows that what was called
mainline is increasingly viewed as sideline, he does believe there is
something to salvage.
"The judgment that Protestantism, classically conceived, has never
achieved a hearing on this continent, however, is obviously excessive.
One name alone, that of Reinhold Niebuhr, suffices to banish such a
suggestion. It is nonetheless true, as Niebuhr's own struggle with his
society demonstrates, that the spirit of Reformation Christianity never
sat easily with the New World experiment and could only become the
dominant element in American culture religion by being significantly
reduced. That reduction, in my view, has become visible in the latter
part of the present century. The question that Tillich asked half a
century ago-a question that seemed strange to North American ears at the
time-is today altogether existential with us." There is an existential
urgency in Hall's prognosis: "Unless there is a radical theological
renewal affecting the Protestant denominations at the congregational
level, the remnants of classical Protestantism in North America will not
survive the twenty-first century."
Not just any kind of theology will do. "Just here, however, we encounter
the nub of the crisis of Protestantism in North America today. The
theology that has been undertaken by professionals since the failure of
Protestant liberalism, which in our context coincides roughly with the
societal crises dating from approximately 1960, has simply not affected
the churches. Liberalism-to be sure, in reduced forms-made its way into
the pews, partly because of its relative simplicity and partly because
it was so compatible with the regnant worldview. One does not lament its
passing, but one does lament the passing of the incipient articulation
of thought that liberalism engendered at the congregational level.
Neither so-called neoorthodoxy nor any of the various 'theologies of'
that have succeeded it can claim to have continued and deepened that
beginning."
Particularly unhelpful, Hall believes, are feminist and other theologies
born from and chiefly borne by a sense of grievance. "As for the
theologies emanating from special-interest groups, while they have
undoubtedly contributed to a certain necessary ferment in the churches,
they have not greatly stimulated the kind of foundational thinking that
(in the language of my thesis) renews. At their best, they challenged
the status quo by bearing witness to the real oppressiveness that is the
shadow side of 'the good' pursued by the dominant culture and church; at
their worst, they have created the impression that the only thing that
can be said about the majority element in the churches is that it is
inherently oppressive."
What Once Existed
Hall, like this writer, is of a certain age, and he recalls the
books that in the 1960s stirred young Protestant theologians to dream
dreams of a theological renewal that would break Christianity out of its
cultural shackles-books such as Berger's The Noise of Solemn
Assemblies, J. C. Hoekendijk's The Church Inside Out, and
William Stringfellow's My People Is the Enemy. Hall's article
appears in Theology Today, the very mainline publication that
once championed such dreams, and he wonders why those books are now
forgotten, and why others like them are not being written. One answer,
he believes, is the aforementioned "interest group theologies," and the
ways in which theology has been commandeered and politicized by the
"justice and peace" cadres. Theology as grievance and theology as
political tool are much easier to deal with than a theology that demands
"a whole new understanding of the Church and its vocation in the
world."
It may be, Hall suggests, that "as the mainline churches dwindle and the
question of their raison d'etre becomes more blatant" a few serious
people will undertake the deep rethinking that is required. Quoting
Hegel, "The owl of Minerva takes flight at evening," he thinks
desperation, too, may have its uses. He holds out the hope that
"mainline Protestants will form new alliances with moderate evangelicals
and progressive Catholics, and, in the process, begin to recover a
gospel that is more than both law (ethics) and culture religion." As
much as one sympathizes with Hall's lament, that seems less than
plausible. After all, it is the self-consciously moderate evangelicals
and progressive Catholics who are most entrenched in the liberal
tradition that Hall rightly says has brought Protestantism to its
present sorry pass.
Nonetheless, Hall is not giving up. "In any case, serious
Christians have no alternative other than to believe that such a renewal
is possible, and to work for it in whatever ways open to them.
Protestantism is not eternal. Jesus Christ did not promise that the
gates of hell would not prevail against Protestantism! But the
Protestant spirit and principle (Tillich) is of the essence of
Christianity; therefore, to abandon the once-mainline Protestant
churches to their own confusion and the designs of the ideologues ought
to be considered in some profound sense a sin against the Holy Spirit!"
It is a touchingly wan note on which to end. Given his own analysis,
there is no apparent connection between maintaining oldline
Protestantism and maintaining Tillich's (and the Reformation's)
Protestant principle. In historical fact-and the Protestant principle,
among other things, attends closely to history-they would seem to have
become antithetical.
One wonders if in his conclusion Douglas John Hall might not have done
better to return to his reflection on the "raison d'etre" of the oldline
churches. What purpose do they serve? Is it not possible that a gospel
that is "more than ethics and culture religion" can be and is today
proclaimed among orthodox Catholics and among evangelicals who do not
think of themselves as moderate? While he calls for a basic and radical
rethinking, Hall stops short of where his argument would seem to lead.
After all these years, he seems still captive to the
mainline/oldline/sideline Protestantism that Dietrich Bonhoeffer nearly
sixty years ago aptly described as Protestantism without the
Reformation. As Bonhoeffer understood, the Protestantism that is truly
of the Reformation must always be returning to the question of the
raison d'etre of its separation from Catholicism. That is the question
to which Hall's reflections tend and to which, one hopes, he will attend
in the future.
Not So Radical Nonviolence
"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." The maxim is attributed to
the late A. J. Muste, who figured for a large part of this century as a
leader of pacifist thought and activism. Of course, today everything is
more complex, as Adam said to Eve on their way out of the garden. "In
the 1990s, the means of living out a commitment to nonviolence for many
seem more complex," opines the editor of the National Catholic
Reporter (NCR). The reference is to Bosnia and the fact that a
remarkable number of the champions of nonviolence have also championed
President Clinton's sending of U.S. troops.
Bosnia is not a hot political topic right now, and probably won't be
unless, God forbid, there are many American casualties. The date of
withdrawal is safely set on the far side of the election, and if the
slaughter then resumes, the U.S. mission will be chalked up as yet
another on a growing list of foreign policy fiascoes. Meanwhile, NCR and
others fret about squaring the circle of nonviolent violence. "For many
in the peace movement, the issues appeared clearer in . . . the Reagan
Administration." That is understandable. Moral clarity is wondrously
enhanced when one is opposing the policy of the other side's President.
Moral complexity sets in when it is the policy of your President. (Bill
Clinton being, for some unexplained reason, the President of people in
"the peace movement." It is probably related to something he did back in
the 1960s, a decade that for NCR and like-minded Christians has never
died.)
The editor notes that complexity in the peace movement is not new, and
recalls earlier disagreements between such as Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy
Day, and Thomas Merton. He fails to note that they never disagreed about
the moral impermissibility of supporting the use of military force.
"Have we stayed faithful to the Christian call to a radically nonviolent
way of life?" the editor anxiously asks. "Faithfulness to a nonviolent
lifestyle cannot help but call one to further soul-searching and a wider
reexamination of conscience and life." Wider, but not necessarily
deeper. Having bowed in the direction of the requisite soul-
searching, NCR comes up with the inoffensive observation that
"the Spirit can move good women and men to respond honestly in different
ways." Then, as though eager to escape the quivering incoherence of this
limp defense of Christian nonviolence, the editor concludes by reaching
for a quite different tradition. "As Chinese Taoist philosophy teaches:
There is one path; there are many paths."
So A. J. Muste got it wrong after all. Sometimes the way to peace is to
send in the troops. That conclusion doesn't bother those of us who have
never been pacifists. It is a poignant thing, however, to see people who
have pledged themselves to "a radically nonviolent way of life" offer up
their conscience to the exigencies of presidential politics. One is
reminded of the scene in Man for All Seasons where Thomas More
at his trial asks to examine the new seal of office worn by the perjurer
Richard Rich. "Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul
for the whole world. But for Wales!" But for Bill Clinton?
Dead Honest
I am prejudiced, of course, but I thought J. Bottum's "Facing Up to
Infanticide" (FT, February) a big help in clearing out the cant in
current talk about an outbreak of pro-choice honesty in the abortion
debate. He focused on the much discussed articles of last fall by Naomi
Wolf in the New Republic and George McKenna in
Atlantic, and he argued that the newfound "honesty" was in fact
laying the groundwork not for the restriction of abortion but for the
extension of the abortion license to born babies and other inconvenient
persons.
As it happens, McKenna, professor of political science at the City
College of New York, does not disagree with Bottum (see letters in this
issue). Writing in that admirable quarterly, the Human Life
Review, McKenna notes that Wolf does not hesitate to call the fetus
"a baby" and is critical of "Yuppie parents-to-be who buy those nice
holistic birthing books, with pretty color pictures of unborn babies,
[and yet] are ready to consign the unwanted unborn to the trash bag."
McKenna likes the following in Wolf's article: "So, what will it be:
Wanted fetuses are charming, complex, REM-dreaming little beings whose
profile on the sonogram looks just like Daddy, but unwanted ones are
mere 'uterine material'?" That's the right question, in McKenna's view,
but he has big problems with where Naomi Wolf goes from there.
McKenna writes: "All right, then, unborn babies are babies. But now Wolf
goes on to insist that 'sometimes the mother must be able to decide that
the fetus, in its full humanity, must die' [emphasis mine]. Putting it
more bluntly-Wolf, after all, wants straight talk-her proposition is
that sometimes a mother must be able to kill her baby. When? She does
not directly answer that question, but her view is not hard to detect.
She notes that when the pollsters ask Americans whether they think
abortion should be 'a matter between a woman, her doctor, her family,
her conscience, and her God,' support for abortion shoots up to 72
percent. She recalls her own success in silencing a pro-life critic by
admitting that 'of course' she had a baby inside her but that if she
felt the need to kill it, 'that would be between myself and God.' This
suggests a triangular relationship: the woman, her baby, and God. But
that is not what she means. In acknowledgment of the fact that many of
her pro-choice readers do not believe in God, Wolf adds that 'if you are
secular and prefer it' you can just say 'conscience.' God' is a kind of
tempo-setter here, a pious word meant to convey a sense of solemnity.
The decision actually involves only the woman, the baby, and herself.
And, since the baby has no voice in the decision, it comes down to the
woman and herself. So if the question were asked when a mother 'must be
able to decide' whether or not to have her baby killed, her answer would
have to be: whenever she feels like it."
When Atlantic Monthly published McKenna's article urging a
Lincoln-like approach to the limitation and final abolition of abortion,
the magazine was deluged with letters of protest, and its electronic
bulletin board nearly exploded. Not so over at the New
Republic, where Wolf's article elicited little response. How could
this be, since both articles had been declared so daring in their
political incorrectness? Cut to the bottom line: McKenna's article
challenged the unlimited abortion license while Wolf was simply
proposing a rhetorical strategy to maintain it, and perhaps extend it.
Stop saying that abortion doesn't kill a baby, she advised. Admit that
it is a baby and then kill it, but regretfully. The readers of the
New Republic can go along with that. A tear, real or feigned,
is but a small price to pay for maintaining the right to abortion at any
time for any reason throughout the course of a pregnancy. And it no
doubt did not escape the notice of some readers that the self-absolution
of soulful regret may come in handy when it is time to get rid of
grandma or others whom we acknowledge, with a brave honesty that does us
credit, really are real people.
While We're At It
- Last December, in Euless, Texas, a young magazine salesman was
charged with assaulting an elderly woman who refused to buy a
subscription from him. Six months earlier, in Fort Collins, Colorado, a
man who turned away another subscription salesman was similarly
attacked. Ours is a somewhat more low-key sales approach: send us the
addresses of those you think might like the journal, and we'll send them
a free sample copy in your name. Please do it now, before we're forced
to consider alternative measures.
- Professor Melvyn New of the University of Florida reviews a book
on anti-Semitic stereotypes in English culture. He criticizes the author
(Frank Felsenstein) for not recognizing that "the Jewish way of thinking
is not a good idea superseded by a better idea, but an idea
legitimately, potently, eternally in conflict with Christianity." And it
is in conflict with Christianity because Christianity is in conflict
with it. New says Felsenstein is so much a liberal that he cannot take
theology seriously. "Felsenstein is blind to the deep embeddedness of
anti-Semitism in Christianity's self-definition: the annihilation of
Jewry is not an afterthought of Christianity, but its violent point of
origin." Only when that is understood does one see "why anti-Semitic
notions put down sturdy and unkillable roots in Christian societies."
One wonders if Prof. New really believes that 90 percent of his fellow
citizens are pledged to a religion that is originally and irradicably
set upon the violent annihilation of Jews. It seems very unlikely. The
more probable explanation is that some religions can be slandered with
impunity, and some academics enjoy the frisson of fantasizing that they
live in great peril. In a victim society, not to be threatened is not to
be. Imagine the burden of everyday life at the University of Florida
where most people are oblivious to your existence and those who aren't
are so very nice. How much more interesting to believe that they really
want to kill you.
- In New York, Berkeley, Madison (Wisconsin) and a few other places
in the country there are still lots of people who feel complimented if
charged with being socialists. The main political writers for the
New York Observer are among them. Shortly before the New York
primary, its headline declared, "A LOOSE BUCHANAN IS HEADING THIS WAY!"
But Observer pundits were not sure whether this is bad news or
good. After all, Buchanan had picked up the fallen standard of the
socialist crusade against Wall Street and all its works and all its
ways. Columnist Joe Conason is skeptical. He says Buchanan is captive to
a bunch of right-wing Protestant kooks who champion Christian
Reconstructionism, in obedience to the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony,
who, he claims, looks forward to a society that executes people for
adultery and homosexuality. Buchanan, according to Conason, "is beyond
the pale of modern Catholicism, Mr. Buchanan's nominal religion."
Feature writer Terry Golway, on the other hand, is intrigued by Buchanan
as the standard-bearer of leftist class warfare and attributes this to
the fervor of his Catholic devotion. "If it sounds to liberal ears as if
Mr. Buchanan has gotten religion, at least on matters economic, it
should be noted that the religion was always there to be had. American
Catholicism, of which Mr. Buchanan is a fervent member, has a long
tradition of two-fisted dissent from WASP individualism and market-
driven inequality. The Civil War-era Catholic bishop of New York, John
Hughes (who was sort of the Rev. Al Sharpton of his day), complained
that the rich were buying their way out of the draft, a practice that
allowed 'the wealthy to become wealthier in their quiet homes.' And New
York's Gilded Age saw the rise of a remarkable priest and social critic
named Dr. Edward McGlynn, who quickly fell in with Henry George, the
writer and mayoral candidate of single-tax fame. McGlynn's Anti-Poverty
Society placed the Church in opposition to the voracious robber barons
and the social misery they inflicted on late-nineteenth-century America.
Yet there are many who believe Pat Buchanan attracts his coreligionists
merely because he is a champion of the unborn, the orthodox, and perhaps
even the Latin mass." That's a pretty quirky reading of Catholic history
(Fr. McGlynn was in fact a notable dissenter from Church authority), but
within hailing distance of part of the story. For Conason, Buchanan is
"Fascism Lite" and his defeat "will come from the same quarters that
smashed fascism the first time around"-mainly from "a revitalized union
movement." These are but tiny samples from the eruption of hysteria
sparked by the thought that Mr. Buchanan might actually win the
Republican nomination. As this is written I am just off the phone with a
network producer who wants to send over a crew to interview me about my
"different view" on whether Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite. The received
view, it appears, is that he is. My "different view" is that anti-
Semitism is a vice so evil as to exclude a person from legitimate public
discourse, and that, while many sensible people worry about it, the
evidence that Buchanan is an anti-Semite is, in my judgment, less than
conclusive. For some, however, it seems that "anti-Semite" is just one
more on a long list of epithets to be thrown at people you don't like.
By the time this sees print, the Buchanan candidacy may very well be
yesterday's news. But already he has been treated to a deluge of
political vitriol rare even in the rough history of American democracy.
For all that one might agree with him on some questions (abortion being
the outstanding instance), Buchanan has recklessly and, it seems,
gleefully been pushing hot buttons in our national life with all the
exuberance of one who enjoys making mischief more than providing
leadership toward a truly common American future. As Harvey Mansfield of
Harvard recently observed in the Times Literary Supplement,
however, most of us are oddly reluctant to admit that there is a close
connection between democracy and demagoguery. The latter (demos
+ agogos from agein) means to lead the people, but one
person's democratic leadership is another's exploitation of prejudice
and faction. In trying to sort this all out in the months ahead, I
expect we will all be put to an uncommon test of civility and common
sense.
- Contrary to Yeats, it sometimes seems to be a narrowing gyre that
keeps circling in until it arrives at the point where it started. The
Rev. James R. Adams directs a new "Center for Progressive Christianity"
that is going to hold a national forum this June at the Episcopal
Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina. Against the conservative turn in
religion and culture, Mr. Adams says that "Many people may be attracted
to aspects of Christianity but also have respect for other religious
traditions. They think how people treat each other is more important
than what people say they believe. Churches today too often fail to
provide a place where such people can be supported in exploring their
deepest questions about life. Instead many churches peddle exclusive
dogmas that cause divisions in society." Deeds not creeds, questions not
answers. And so, as Eliot didn't say, they arrive where they started and
know the place for the umpteenth time, survivors of a disappointing
journey, huddling together to assure one another that, despite all, they
have seen the future and it is liberal Christianity. (And, if the word
Christianity threatens to "cause divisions," that too can be
negotiated.)
- The Children's Zoo in Central Park has been a beloved fixture for
generations and is now being redesigned. The committee in charge
announced that they would have to get rid of sculptures such as Noah's
Ark and Jonah's Whale since they are religious, and the use of public
funds for their renovation would be a violation of church and state.
Now, according to the New York Times, Parks Commissioner Henry
J. Stern is stepping back a little. "He said Noah should not be viewed
as a biblical character, which the [wildlife] society has called
inappropriate for a public park, but as the first conservationist
because he saved animals before the flood."
- On any given weekend, more than half of America's teenage
population is in church, significantly higher than the adult percentage.
Gallup asked teenagers, How important is it that parents go to church
with children and teens? Thirty-eight percent said it was very important
that parents go with teens, and another 35 percent said it was somewhat
important. Fifty-one percent said it is important they go with children
twelve and under, and 33 percent said it was somewhat important. So
about 55 percent of teenagers go to church each week, and about 75
percent of them think their parents should go too. I don't know how much
good news you can take at one sitting, but there are these other
findings. While expressing tolerance of situations where single parents
are raising children, teenagers have very traditional attitudes about
their own future. Ninety-five percent of teenagers plan to marry, 93
percent plan to have children, only 19 percent think it likely they
could have an illegitimate child some day, 80 percent think it is too
easy to get a divorce, 70 percent think divorced people did not work
hard enough at saving their marriages, and 65 percent think they will
never be divorced. Interestingly, there is slight difference between
teenagers who do and those who do not go to church, except that 72
percent of those who do attend think it unlikely they will ever be
divorced, compared with 56 percent who do not attend. There are other
questions one wishes Mr. Gallup might have asked, and of course these
answers tell us nothing about what these kids will actually end up
doing, but what they say they intend to do is, all in all, an
encouragement.
- Here's a mailing inviting me to join the ACLU. Not to worry. It
begins with highlighted quotes of Ralph Reed and Newt Gingrich, who
apparently want to, among other horribles, revive the Inquisition and
repeal the First Amendment. "But we must fight back now-before it's too
late," exhorts executive director Ira Glasser. The mailing includes a
flyer with glowing endorsements of the ACLU and its importance to
American freedom. There are three such endorsements, one by John F.
Kennedy, one by Adlai E. Stevenson, and one by Earl Warren. It would
probably be unkind to tell Mr. Glasser that they are all dead.
- Arriving in the mail is this attractive prospectus from the
Progress and Freedom Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. They do
some good work, but I was struck by the motto on the prospectus cover:
"Progress: The belief that Mankind has advanced in the past, is
presently advancing, and will continue to advance through the
foreseeable future." O ye of great, and tragically misplaced, faith.
- "When you consider the issues of the day, which of the following
is most likely to influence your own views?" According to Gallup, only 7
percent of Americans check "Your own religious leaders." Forty-two
percent say "News media commentators and reporters," while 30 percent
opt for "Your family or friends." David Frum has a nice term for those
who are always saying that their views are "beyond" liberal and
conservative, or that liberal and conservative are no longer useful
categories. He calls them the "Beyondists." The same Gallup poll
provides slight support for Beyondism. Asked whether religious leaders
have too much or too little influence on public opinion, 34 percent of
self-identified liberals say too much and 21 percent say too little,
while only 16 percent of conservatives say too much and 36 percent say
too little. This poll, like many others, shows a strong correlation
between those who say that religion is important in their lives and
those who describe themselves as conservative. Just one more item: Asked
whether the government or religious organizations should be more
responsible for "providing assistance to the poor," 74 percent of
liberals and 39 percent of conservatives answer the government. And so
it goes with question after question. It does seem, all in all, and the
Beyondists notwithstanding, that Gilbert is still right in saying that
nature does contrive "That every boy and every gal, That's born into the
world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative."
- In his presidential address to the Central Division of the
American Philosophical Association, Philip L. Quinn of Notre Dame takes
on the question of "Political Liberalisms and Their Exclusions of the
Religious." He goes on at length about "religion and the public square"
without mentioning you-know-who, which bothers you-know-who only a
little (see "He Who Steals My Words . . ." January). Unlike
conservatives, says Quinn, liberals affirm "the duty of civility."
Liberals who are religious are "in a position to argue for liberal laws
and policies from religious premises and thereby show secular liberals
that some religious people are their allies, and they would also be in a
position to dispute the political agenda of the Religious Right on
religious grounds. I am convinced that such a challenge would be good
for the health of the American body politic." Quinn also wants "to
encourage religious citizens to refrain from advocating repeal of the
Establishment Clause or trying to make the United States into a
'Christian nation,' whatever hat might mean." In addition, "I would make
similar claims about other, less dramatic cases in which it is morally
permissible but less than ideal for citizens to introduce their
religious concerns into politics." So religion in public life can serve
the limited purpose of scoring a point against the awful "religious
right" and of showing that religious people can be good liberals, too,
but in general citizens should keep their religion to themselves. Word
about the movement to repeal the Establishment Clause, which is
apparently a big thing in South Bend, Indiana, has not yet reached New
York or, as far as I know, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Once again, Notre
Dame is ahead of the curve.
- Some articles have a longer shelf life than others. Last August,
Jerry Muller published "The Conservative Case for Abortion" in the
New Republic, and it has established itself as a standard
reference for political and economic conservatives who are unhappy with
the pro-life movement. The article was a grave disappointment in this
shop, since Muller, who teaches at Catholic University, is a gifted
intellectual who had played a valuable part in some of our Institute's
programs. The article's argument is that conservatives strongly support
"the bourgeois family" and the bourgeois family depends upon the control
of reproduction that contraception and abortion provide. Writing in a
new magazine, Culture Wars, John J. Reilly indicates that he is
not persuaded. Muller, he contends, is but a typical member of the
"Overclass" that acknowledges no truth other than personal preference,
and that is the very antithesis of anything that warrants the name
conservative. Reilly writes: "Muller's argument is really about the need
for a eugenic contraceptive policy, one designed not to weed out bad
genes, but bad culture. Abortion is regarded simply as another technique
to that end. Overclass culture is capable of acknowledging that there
may be some special ethical issues involved in the abortion question,
but is quite without any mechanism for assessing the importance of one
moral principle with respect to another. That is why it calls principles
'values,' like quantities that can be added up and averaged out. There
is therefore nothing 'bourgeois' about the Overclass, if by bourgeois
you mean the culture of people like the well-to-do Victorians. To the
Overclass every virtue is a construct, subject to no scheme of value but
their own will. People who think like this are not 'conservative,'
whether they are Overclass lawyers or illegal aliens. They do not and
they will not create strong families, because they think that families
are arbitrary constructs, defined according to personal convenience and
dissoluble at their own considered whim. Having rejected traditional
moral norms, they have no history to conserve, and they will make
nothing worth keeping."
- The line between quackery and medicine has never been quite so
bright as the professionals would have us believe, but it is necessary
to keep trying to determine where it should be drawn. That is why in
1992 Congress directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to set up
an Office of Alternative Medicine. The office has only $14 million out
of an NIH budget of $11 billion, but that doesn't stop conventional
practitioners and scientists from complaining about the competition from
"peddlers of snake oil remedies." For instance, Robert L. Park and
Ursula Goodenough, professors of physics and biology respectively, have
a rant on the op-ed page of our parish newspaper against the
respectability being given to the claims of "amazing health benefits
from touch therapy, spiritual healing, and a dozen other remedies that
were once the stuff of tabloids." They allege that health maintenance
organizations are willing to pay for alternative treatments "because
they are far cheaper than traditional medicines." They grudgingly admit
that many people testify that they have been greatly helped by
homeopathic and other techniques, but that is attributable to their
gullibility and the well-known "placebo effect." It is all too obvious,
however, that Park and Goodenough, who think medical business as usual
is good enough, are offended by the competition. They note that "About
$13 billion per year is spent by Americans on alternative treatments,
many of which have no scientific basis." And they are offended by the
challenge to their faith commitment: "Biomedical research (much of it
financed by NIH) is on a spectacular roll, with important new insights
emerging daily. These gains, however, can alienate those who want to
believe that events are not determined solely by physical laws. There is
nostalgia for a time when things seemed simpler and more natural." The
Parks and Goodenoughs are touchingly devout acolytes of scientistic
orthodoxy and seem quite incapable of seeing that they have things
exactly backward. What is really hard to believe, what reflects a
nostalgia for a simpler time when reality was reduced to the model of
laboratory experimentation, is the dogma that events are determined
solely by physical laws. That was the little orthodoxy that was for so
very long established by government funding, and it is not surprising
that its devotees are having difficulties in adjusting to even a very
modest measure of disestablishment. I have no doubt there are charlatans
out there promoting all sorts of phony cures, some of which may actually
be harmful. And I am personally grateful for traditional practitioners
who cut a big cancerous tumor out of my gut a few years ago, a problem
that I doubt would have been amenable to touch therapy. On the other
hand, honest doctors will admit how little they know, how many medical
problems are caused or exacerbated by traditional treatments, and how
often they are dumbfounded by cures that defy conventional explanations.
So it would seem to be a very good thing that there is an Office of
Alternative Medicine. There are more things in heaven and earth, Drs.
Park and Goodenough, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. While we
might have a measured sympathy for those who suffer from nostalgia for a
simpler time when they had a monopoly on defining medical truth, true
science moves on.
- "Access Denied" pops up on the computer screen when you can't get
into a classified file. (I saw that in the movies. My computer is
primitive and only plugged into my own stuff.) Chicago law professor and
feminist Linda Hirschmann urges women to deny "sexual access" to men who
are not prepared to offer a quid pro quo. According to this article in
the Episcopal magazine, Witness, Hirschmann wants strict
enforcement of laws prohibiting fornication among unmarried adults, and
believes that current statutory rape laws should be used to jail
teenagers who engage in sex. "Frankly," says Hirschmann, "I would raise
the age of sexual consent to eighteen, maybe even twenty-one, so that a
girl is out of high school before she's harvested for sex." (These
feminists do talk that way.) Men are stronger and more politically
powerful, says Hirschmann, "So when they bargain for sexual access in
society they wield a lot of advantages." While she favors criminalizing
sex between consenting heterosexual adults, she recognizes that "the
machinery it would take to enforce such laws would make even a 'femi-
nazi' like me shudder." Women should understand that their ability to
give men sexual access is a powerful commodity, says Hirschmann, who
developed the idea of sexual "bargaining" from her work with labor
unions. Is this woman pro-family, or what?
- Way over there on the left end of the evangelical spectrum is Jim
Wallis of Sojourners magazine, and way over there on the right
end is Pat Robertson of Pat Robertson Inc. Reviewing The Soul of
Politics by Wallis and The New World Order by Robertson,
Keith Pavlischek, writing in the promising new magazine,
Regeneration, says that, far from being polar opposites, Wallis
and Robertson are "the political twin sons of William Jennings Bryan."
Come again? Pavlischek means that they are both heirs of the populist
enthusiasm of Bryan, and he quotes Mark Noll's description of that
phenomenon in the book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind:
"Since Evangelicalism has remained a deeply populist movement, the most
visible forms of political reflection have still been intuitive-carried
on without serious recourse to self-conscious theological construction,
systematic moral philosophy, thorough historical analysis, or careful
social scientific research." Pavlischek concludes: "While Robertson
seeks to crack the 'code language' of internationalists who speak of
things like a 'New World Order,' Wallis seeks to decode the language of
'family values.' And both, in typically gnostic fashion, seem to assume
that they hold some special, code-deciphering charisma. That is why the
soul of neither of these books is identifiably Christian and why the
politics isn't really politics. Both seem to think that they can ignore
with impunity centuries of responsible Christian reflection on political
life. No need to carefully work through the distinction between a
chastened patriotism and an idolatrous nationalism if the Republic has a
'destiny' as a chosen people or if it is 'Babylon' reincarnated. No need
to work through centuries of Christian reflection on the use of lethal
force and how it might apply to the Iraqi crisis. But, even more
seriously, no need to reflect on the nature of the Church as an
exclusive community of believers. Gnostic-like 'prophetic' insight
trumps serious reflection. I suspect that a century from now historians
looking back on evangelical political reflection may still be wondering
why the evangelical mind at the end of the twentieth century was so
scandalous. They will know what it is too early for us to tell: whether
Bryan's political grandchildren grew up to have more sense than their
parents."
- The Catholic Church's teaching that it lacks authority to ordain
women to the priesthood, a teaching now formally described as
infallible, is being deplored by the usual suspects in the usual ways,
but there is reason to believe that the controversy created by agitation
for women's ordination is going out with a whimper rather than a bang.
The London Tablet has a novel take on the question, however.
The editor interprets the Code of Canon Law-Canon 749, to be precise-as
preventing the Pope from saying that the teaching on women's ordination
is infallible. Of the canon in question, the editor says, "Every
Catholic is bound by it, including the Pope and the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith in their promulgation of doctrine and all the
faithful in their reception of it." Biblical precedent, tradition, and
the Pope are not infallible but canon law is? The judicial trumps the
doctrinal? Any argument in a storm, I suppose. In the same issue of the
Tablet, celebrated dissenter Hans Kung rails against the
"compassionless rigorism" and "spiritual dictatorship" of John Paul II
and declares his fidelity to Catholic teaching as defined by his
anticipated Vatican Council III. Not to be outdone, editor John Wilkins
admires the sentiment of a former colleague who declared, "I believe . .
. in the Catholicism of two thousand years hence." That seems safe
enough. Canon law does not allow for troublesome directives from the
distant future. With Fr. Kung "waiting for Vatican III" and Mr. Wilkins
pledging his obedience to the Church of Anno Domini 3996, the rest of us
will somehow have to do without their help in coping with the Church
that is. Progressives who say you can't turn back the clock are
wondrously adept at turning it ahead. Since we know something about the
past, those who seek refuge there must come to terms with some
limitations. Escape into the future, on the other hand, is free-floating
fancy. It is, I suppose, a liberation theology of sorts.
- A private school in Hawaii gets some bad press because it declined
to hire a headmaster who was not a Christian. It seems that the school
suddenly rediscovered its Christian identity for the purpose of the
hiring process. Now in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Cub Scout pack at Haven
Reformed Church doesn't want a Muslim, Abdul-Mutakallim, to be pack
leader, even though he had worked with the pack for some years. Pastor
Keith Lohman says that, since Scout Pack 293 is a church program, the
top job should be held by a Christian. That sounds fair enough, but it
seems that Muslim and Jewish parents with kids in the pack had not
noticed anything ostensibly Christian about the program before this. In
the public mind nominal church affiliation does not excuse religious
discrimination, and on this the public mind may be right. Religious
discrimination is a very good thing if there's something substantively
religious to discriminate about.
- G. K. Chesterton nuts (one of the grandest nuttinesses in this
nutty world) may want to know that the Midwest Chesterton Society is
holding its fifteenth annual meeting June 27-29 in Milwaukee's Cousins
Center, and John Peterson (740 Spruce Road, Barrington, Illinois 60010)
has all the pertinent information.
- No good deed goes unreproached. The following letter is from
Beverly Dolinsky in the "Metropolitan Diary" of our local newspaper.
"Dear Diary: This morning at the C train 42nd Street stop I saw a blind
man who seemed confused about where to go. I approached him and asked if
he needed help. He said he wanted to go to the Port Authority Bus
Terminal. When he took my arm so that I could help him, he felt my coat
sleeve and asked what kind of coat I was wearing. 'Fur,' I said. 'Shame
on you,' he replied."
- We noted here the article in the Nation by Harvey Cox of
Harvard Divinity School, imploring his fellow leftists to entertain the
possibility that they might have something to learn from religion, and
even from people associated with the Christian Coalition. Katha Pollitt,
Associate Editor of that museum of liberalisms past, isn't buying.
Religion, she declares, is "a farrago of authoritarian nonsense,
misogyny, and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and
freedom." Peter Steinfels of our local newspaper offers the wry
observation: "Professor Cox is an inveterate yeasayer who has always
spied the workings of God's grace (as well as the contours of the Social
Gospel) in one cultural movement after another, from the pragmatic
secularism of the Kennedy era to the carnival spirit of the
counterculture and the worldwide growth of Pentecostalism. So, he asks,
why not cast an appreciative eye at the Christian Coalition, or at least
at the wider body of conservative believers who surround them?" Ms.
Pollitt, on the other hand, is a "born naysayer," says Steinfels. "With
equal amount of satisfaction and self-mockery, she recounts in her
column how, by merely mentioning on the CNN television program
Crossfire that she does not believe in God, she earned the
title 'Free-Thought Heroine of 1995' from the Freedom From Religion
Foundation. She is, in fact, a kind of conservative, relishing the role
of unreconstructed defender of that old-time atheism. (One can imagine
her singing, 'It was good enough for Diderot, it's good enough for
me.')" The reactionaries of the Nation's world are decidedly on
Ms. Pollitt's side of this question. "Whenever I feel unloved," she told
Steinfels, "I can always write another column assaulting religion, and I
get all this fan mail."
- Once again PLAGAL (Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians) was at
the big Washington march in January. Once again their support was warmly
welcomed by most pro-lifers. Once again they were attacked by other
homosexual groups for breaking ranks with the party line on abortion.
And once again a few pro-lifers tried to prevent their joining the
march. Philip Arcidi, president of PLAGAL, asked a number of people to
sign a statement, and I gladly complied. The statement reads: "Pro-
Lifers work together for one common goal: to save mothers and their
children from abortion. The Pro-Life movement, which encompasses a broad
spectrum of our nation, does not impose on its members a consensus on
other issues. Therefore, we work with peaceful groups that evidence
singular dedication to this common goal. We join together for a cause
that is stronger than our differences, and we will continue to work
together until the rights of America's unborn are restored."
- The "leap of faith" advocated by Kierkegaard was derided as a
"copout" by Albert Camus in his 1944 essay The Myth of
Sisyphus. There the "godless saint" had promised "to live without
appeal" to a transcendent Being. Reviewing Camus' last, and unfinished,
novel The First Man in the London Tablet, Michael
Scott-Moncrieff speculates that the executors may have waited so long to
publish it out of fear that people would think Camus had compromised the
posture that appealed so strongly to a self-consciously alienated
generation. In the reviewer's judgment, however, The First Man
is the best of the novels and represents something like a consummation.
"And by the end-here, in Camus' last testament to mankind-he proclaims
the power of grace through repentance, the need for a father who would
blame him and praise him 'by right not of power but authority,' and says
of his beloved, impoverished, illiterate, and uncomplaining mother:
'Maman is Christ.' By grace, and the power of his own 'boot-straps,'
Camus' thought becomes truly doctrinal through the love he bears her:
'She does not know Christ's life, except on the cross. Yet who is closer
to it?'" The difference from the earlier novels is described this way:
"In comparison his previous novels seem to suffer-as cut diamonds do
from uncut ones-from a sort of sand-blown purity, honed to the bone, a
sense of 'precisely this and no more.' But in this one he is struggling
with the 'more'; still holding himself back, perhaps, from making a
definitive leap; but tottering splendidly on the brink." Buried among
the notes that Camus wrote to himself, which are included in The
First Man, is this dramatically revised reflection on Sisyphus and
the futility of life: "Begin the last part with this scene: 'The blind
donkey who for years patiently turns his wheel in a circle, enduring
beatings, the ferocity of nature, the sun, the flies, still enduring,
and from that slow circular motion, seemingly fruitless, monotonous,
painful, water endlessly flows. . . .'" Seemingly fruitless, but from it
endlessly flows the water that, the reader may infer, is not unrelated
to saving grace.
- "Are American Jews Still Liberal?" That is the question asked by
Earl Raab of Brandeis University, who analyzes a recent survey of Jews
in the San Francisco area. Only 10 percent identify themselves as
"conservative," but those who say they are "moderate" are increasingly
conservative-at least on some questions. In this survey, they come down
strongly conservative, for instance, on attitudes toward the size of
government, crime, and affirmative action. On other questions, however,
they are all crowded at one end of the spectrum. For the most notable
instance, 90 percent approve the proposition that "Women should be able
to have abortions without restriction." Raab believes that one big
reason behind Jewish support for abortion, and their Democratic voting
pattern, is their fear of "the religious right." This touches on what
Raab calls "the security question," since publicly assertive
Christianity is associated with the threat of anti-Semitism.
"Particularly striking is that about nine-tenths of liberals, three-
quarters of moderates, and two-thirds of conservatives in the survey
express alarm over the role of evangelical Christians in politics. Much
of the intensity of Jewish opinion on this issue undoubtedly stems from
fear of anti-Semitism, a fear that persists despite the fact that it
rests partly on a fallacy. Although Jews have regularly rated Christian
fundamentalists as the American group most inimical to them, in one of
the most comprehensive studies of recent years no discernible difference
on the standard index of anti-Semitic beliefs was noted between
fundamentalists and other Christians (or, for that matter, between
Democrats and Republicans)." Here is Raab's conclusion, offering his
answer to the question posed by his title: "And so, if the past is any
guide, there will continue to be much truth in the notion that if you
scratch an American Jew, you will find a Democratic voter. The
complicating news today is that if you scratch somewhat deeper, you will
not always find a liberal."
- Perhaps an editor with a puckish sense of humor put the story
alongside another about Old Faithful, the geyser at Yellowstone Park
that is no longer erupting on schedule. The story by Karen De Witt of
the New York Times is about Feminist Expo, an event that
brought three thousand women to Washington to revive the failing
fortunes of their movement. Gloria Steinem, "blond braid silvered with
gray," was there, as was octogenarian Molly Yard, past president of the
National Organization for Women (NOW). Some eruptions can still be
counted on. Feminist Expo was sponsored by the Feminist Majority
Foundation "and 299 other organizations." If the three thousand figure
is correct, that's ten members per organization. Ms. De Witt reports
that the executive director of NOW "chided reporters" at a news
conference that they should not just talk to "the oldies but goldies"
but should focus on the younger women at the meeting. Having received
her orders, Ms. De Witt dutifully devotes the rest of her story to
quoting younger women. Yes, they do think feminism is still relevant.
Ms. De Witt does note that speakers stressed cooperation across racial
lines, although "the conference participants were overwhelmingly white."
From the fact that the obviously sympathetic Ms. De Witt does not quote
one person of color, one may reasonably suspect that there were no
persons of color to quote. The meeting issued "a call to arms
reminiscent of the Freedom Summer of 1964, the civil rights movement's
campaign to register black voters in Mississippi, one flier reading
'Freedom Summer '96.' " Back to the future. Some call to arms.
Interestingly, in the Times' generous coverage of Feminist Expo
there was almost no mention of abortion. The big excitement was for
advancing affirmative action, with particular attention to gender-
preference in hiring and promotion. You have to hand it to them, those
oldies but goldies sure know how to catch the cusp of public enthusiasm.
As for the other story, it seems the problem with Old Faithful has to do
with undetected seismic shifts.
- We mentioned a new group with the striking name Protestants
Against Birth Control but gave, because we were given, the wrong phone
number. The right one is 414-483-3399 (fax: 414-571-4226).
- University Faculty for Life holds its annual conference May 31-
June 1 at Georgetown University. Featured speakers are Julian Simon,
Mercedes Wilson, William Brennan, and Laura Garcia. For information,
write UFL, 120 New North Bldg., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
20007.
- In 1969, Senator Daniel P. Moynihan had the support of Jewish
leadership, mainline Protestants, and the Catholic bishops for his
Family Assistance Plan. It was a good plan, says Bishop James T. McHugh
of Camden, New Jersey, but as time went by the social liberals jumped
ship "and the bishops stood alone as the plan went down." Bishop McHugh
offers a succinct description of our present circumstance: "Now we seem
poised for a replay, but the ground has shifted. The Congress is intent
on cutting costs. The President is given to rhetoric but lacks an
alternative plan. Moynihan and his allies are caught up in despair, and
the Catholic social activists know not where to go except to defend the
status quo." His analysis, unfortunately, rings true. There is a measure
of truth in the title of Mrs. Clinton's book, It Takes a Village to
Raise a Child, says the bishop, but the problem is that too many
people, including, it seems, Mrs. Clinton, assume that a village means
the government. The greater truth, according to Bishop McHugh, is that
"it still takes a family to raise a child." Those who understand what
has happened to families, and especially to poor families in the last
three decades, need to come up with a Family Assistance Plan tailored to
the world of 1996. Making children wards of the governmental village has
been tried and has failed-catastrophically. Any proposal now must pass
the test of enabling and inducing parents to do what they alone can do
well, viz., rear the children that are theirs.
- It's too late to sign up now, but here's a full-page advertisement
in the Christian Century for a two-day April conference that
bears the impressive title, "A Politics of the Image of God," and the
equally impressive subtitle, "The Summit on Ethics and Meaning." A
summit on ethics and meaning is the kind of thing that I would
ordinarily not want to miss. The event is sponsored by Michael Lerner
and his publication Tikkun, which styles itself "the magazine
of liberal Jews." The principals gathering at the summit on ethics and
meaning and a politics of the image of God include Cornel West, Jim
Wallis, Jonathan Kozol, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvey Cox, Stephen
Carter, and the Congressman son of Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson, Jr. The
announcement says the summit meeting will advance "a whole new paradigm
for politics, moving beyond left/right dichotomies." This is the much
discussed nonpartisanship of what David Frum calls the Beyondists. Lest
nonpartisanship get out of hand, however, we are told that participants
"seek to counter the right's claim to be the voice of the ethical,
spiritual, and family crisis in American society." Perhaps it is just as
well to let the left be the voice of family crisis. The ad says, "The
Summit will be a historic event. . . . By buying this ad in a Christian
magazine, we at Tikkun are doing what we can to reach out to
your world." Message received. "If you can't make it," the ad continues,
"subscribe to Tikkun and join the discussion of the politics of
meaning." Michael Lerner is credited with having put the First Lady on
to "the politics of meaning," although she says she met with him but
once, and that only for fifteen minutes or less. On the other hand, it
has been reported that she sometimes has memory problems. In any event,
I had to pass on The Summit on Ethics and Meaning. At the risk of
sounding dismissive, the message of the Behindists posing as Beyondists
is all too familiar by now.
- They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Some wiseacres over at
Commonweal have come up with this parody of the ubiquitous ads
for the New Oxford Review. The full-page parody advertises the
New Ostrich Review under a cartoon gargoyle wearing a papal
tiara and the bold heading, "Do Catholics have bad breath?" "You'd sure
think so," the ad says, "the way sneering cultural elites and the
satanic secular press crucify us. As Harvard historian Arthur
Schlesinger, Sr., observed, the belief that Catholics have bad breath is
'the deepest bias in the history of the American people.' We're just as
much victims as anyone else, and don't you forget it." The ad continues:
"We at the New Ostrich Review say: Enough! We lift high our
heads for the Magisterium, for the papacy, for the Catholicism of the
ages. We stand unashamedly with its saints, its martyrs, its popes, its
crusaders, its popes again, its inquisitors. Well, maybe not the really
rough inquisitors." And more: "We're smart enough after all to know that
we don't have all the answers. Isn't that what a papacy is for? We're
not among those self-hating dissenters who bellyache at every teaching
that is difficult or inconvenient, the kind of weak reeds who would
complain to the media if the Pope told Catholics they could only have
sex standing on their heads every Tuesday. We believe in the Magisterium
and papal authority. And naturally we'd look forward to Tuesdays." "If
you're fed up with dissent and decay, if you're a Catholic who
unashamedly recognizes that obedience is what Catholicism is unashamedly
all about-and that feeling smugly superior to your surrounding culture
is the sure sign of an authentic orthodox faith-then give us a try!" The
ad concludes with the notice, "Please allow two or three centuries for
delivery of first issue." Of course the parody is unfair to the New
Oxford Review, as is the way with parodies. But it is delightfully
funny, and I would be surprised if the NOR editors are not at this very
minute working on an equally delightful riposte. Thank goodness a really
serious publication like First Things is above such frivolities.
- "No party lasts forever," said Episcopal bishop John S. Spong of
Newark, New Jersey, announcing his plans to retire following the
election of a successor. Bishop Spong-sometimes called Bishop Sponge for
his wondrous capacity for cultural assimilation-set a condition,
however. If those opposed to his promotion of ordaining non-celibate
homosexual clergy "continue to harass me or this diocese, I will
renounce these transition plans." A bishop threatening a church body
with his continued service may be a precedent.
- One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic. Stalin
is supposed to have said that, and he certainly acted upon it. Or at
least on the second part of it, since it is far from clear that he
thought even one death a tragedy. The best estimate is that, under Lenin
and Stalin, at least fifty million people were killed as a matter of
state policy, apart from the twenty million deaths resulting from World
War II. President Boris Yeltsin set up a Commission for Rehabilitating
Victims of Political Repression, and the commission now reports that the
dimensions of religious persecution were much greater than previously
thought. Over two hundred thousand Orthodox priests, monks, and nuns
were slaughtered in the Communist purges of the 1920s and 1930s.
According to commission chairman Aleksander Yakovlev, most priests were
shot or hanged, although Communist death squads crucified many on church
doors and left others to freeze to death in winter after being stripped
and soaked in water. In addition to those killed directly, Yakovlev
confirms that another half-million priests and religious were imprisoned
or deported to Siberia. In a top-secret message of March 1922 to the
Politburo, Lenin urged "frenzied and ruthless energy" in seizing church
properties, and called for current famine and disease to be exploited in
removing enemies of the regime. As many "representatives of the
reactionary clergy" as possible should be shot, Lenin commanded, in
order to teach opponents of communism "such a lesson that they will not
dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades." In
September 1943, Stalin decided to reach an accommodation with the
Orthodox Church in order to enlist its cooperation in the war effort,
and this required convening a synod. Fewer than twenty of the church's
two hundred bishops were found still alive in prisons and work camps. In
return for total cooperation with the regime, a third of the 54,000
churches that had been closed were allowed to reopen, and the
Patriarchate was permitted to move from a shed on Moscow's outskirts to
the former German embassy. It is not simply that a million deaths have
become a statistic, but in this bloody century scholars split the
difference over estimates of millions and even tens of millions of
victims. Have Communist regimes deliberately killed eighty million or
two hundred million of their citizens? The "scholarly consensus," we are
told, is that the right figure is "no less than" 130 million. More or
less. And the tragedy of any death and every death is lost in the
aggregate. Contemplating crimes of a much lesser scale, St. Augustine
wrote 1600 years ago, "Let every one, then, who thinks with pain on
these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is
misery. And if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental
pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy
because he has lost human feeling" (City of God XIX,7).
- The 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature went to Irish poet Seamus
Heaney, and I had to confess I had not read much of him at all. I've
been working on amends, including a close reading of his lecture upon
accepting the Prize. It's called "Crediting Poetry" and is about trying
to do justice to both the terror and sweetness of things. He tells this
story: "One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the
harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of
workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by
armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to
line up at the side of the road. Then one of the masked executioners
said to them, 'Any Catholics among you, step out here.' As it happened,
this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the
presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant
paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the
Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be
in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions. It was a terrible moment
for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to
step forward. Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision,
and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the
hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it
in a signal that said no, don't move, we'll not betray you, nobody need
know what faith or party you belong to. All in vain, however, for the
man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple,
he was pushed away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the
line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably,
of the Provisional IRA." He says it is hard at times to repress the
thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir, but there
is a duty to try. Heaney cites Yeats generously, especially his
"Meditations in Time of Civil War," and says of that poem: "It knows
that the massacre will happen again on the roadside, that the workers in
the minibus are going to be lined up and shot down just after quitting
time; but it also credits as a reality the squeeze of the hand, the
actuality of sympathy and protectiveness between living creatures. It
satisfies the contradictory needs which consciousness experiences at
times of extreme crisis, the need on the one hand for a truth-telling
that will be hard and retributive, and on the other hand the need not to
harden the mind to a point where it denies its own yearnings for
sweetness and trust." I expect to be reading more of Seamus Heaney.
- Nephews, nieces, cousins, that doctor who said he is interested in
philosophy. Or was it theology? They might all be included in that list
of potential subscribers you were going to send us.
Sources: Fr. John Kavanaugh on Christianity and
politics, America, January 27, 1996. A Requiem for Karl
Marx reviewed by Michael Ignatieff, New Republic, February
5, 1996. Caryn James on films sponsored by the Sacred Heart League,
New York Times, February 3 and 4, 1996. On political ambition,
Weekly Standard, February 12, 1996; Edmund Morgan on George
Washington, New York Review of Books, February 29, 1996.
Douglas John Hall on "The Future of Protestantism in North America,"
Theology Today, January 1996. Editorial on nonviolence,
National Catholic Reporter, February 9, 1996. George McKenna on
Naomi Wolf, Human Life Review, Winter 1996.
While We're At It: On violent magazine salesmen, Albuquerque
Journal, December 10, 1995 and Fort Collins Coloradoan,
June 1995. Prof. Melvyn New on Christian anti-Semitism, Eighteenth-
Century Fiction, January 1996. Joe Conason on Patrick Buchanan,
New York Observer, February 26, 1996. James R. Adams on dogmatic
churches, Center for Progressive Christianity press release. On removal
of Noah's Ark and Jonah's Whale from Children's Zoo, New York
Times, November 2, 1995. On teenagers and religion,
emerging trends, October 1995. Gallup statistics cited in
emerging trends, Princeton Religion Research Center, November
1995. Philip L. Quinn on liberalism and the exclusion of religion,
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
Association, November 1995. John J. Reilly on abortion, Culture
Wars, November 1995. Robert L. Park and Ursula Goodenough quoted on
alternative medical treatments, New York Times, January 3,
1996. Linda Hirschmann on denying men "sexual access," Witness,
December 1995. Keith Pavlischek on Jim Wallis and Pat Robertson,
Regeneration, Fall 1995. On Canon Law 749, Tablet,
December 16, 1995. On religious discrimination in Hawaii public school
and Michigan Cub Scout pack, Christian Century, January 3-10,
1996. Story of blind man and woman in fur coat, New York Times,
January 24, 1996. Peter Steinfels on dispute between Harvey Cox and
Katha Pollitt, New York Times, January 27, 1996. Earl Raab on
liberalism and American Jews, Commentary, February 1996. On
Feminist Expo, New York Times, February 5, 1996. Bishop McHugh
in diocesan column, February 14, 1996. Ad for "The Summit on Ethics and
Meaning," Christian Century, March 3, 1996. Ad for fictitious
New Ostrich Review in Commonweal, February 9, 1996. Bishop
Spong on retirement plans, news release from Episcopal Diocese of
Newark, January 29, 1996. On persecution of Russian Orthodox Church,
Tablet, December 23/30, 1995. Seamus Heaney's Nobel lecture,
"Crediting Poetry," in New Republic, December 25, 1995.