Separation of Church and State

In an earlier post I argued that the separation of church and state is appropriate, but not the separation of religion and state. Philip Schaff made pretty much the same point in his America.

We would by no means vindicate this separation of church and state as the perfect and final relation between the two. The kingdom of Christ is to penetrate and transform like leaven, all the relations of individual and national life. We much prefer this separation, however, to the territorial system and a police guardianship of the church, the Bride of the God-man, the free-born daughter of heaven; and we regard it as adapted to the present wants of America, and favorable to her religious interests. For it is by no means to be thought, that the separation of church and state there is a renunciation of Christianity by the nation; like the separation of the state and the school from the church, and the civil equality of Atheism with Christianity, which some members of the abortive Frankfurt Parliament were for introducing in Germany. It is not an annihilation of one factor, but only an amicable separation of the two in their spheres of outward operation; and thus equally the church's declaration of independence towards the state, and an emancipation of the state from bondage to a particular confession. The nation, therefore, is still Christian, though it refuses to be governed in this deepest concern of the mind and heart by the temporal power. In fact, under such circumstances, Christianity, as the free expression of personal conviction and of the national character, has even greater power ove the mind, than when enjoined by civil laws and upheld by police regulations."

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Are Calvinists Also Among the Gnostics?

Earlier in the year as I was reading history for my doctoral research with King's College, London, I was struck again and again by just how Gnostic so much of the Calvinist tradition is, especially Calvinism of the Puritan variety. In this post I would like to consider four areas where the imprint of Gnosticism can be felt within the Puritan strain of the Calvinist tradition before going on to consider the Gnostic tendencies of Calvin himself.

Confusing freedom with provision

The confusion of freedom with provision may have been inevitable once the Declaration made the pursuit of happiness a self-evident universal right. Franklin Roosevelt built on the tendency to confuse freedom with provision in his 1944 State of the Union address when he justified what he called a “second Bill of Rights” on the grounds that “Necessitous men are not free men”. The state, he went on to argue, must provide a “new basis of security and prosperity” which included “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.”

Of course, the corollary of believing that “necessitous men are not free” is that any measure of government control, provided it relieves necessity, is a sacrifice we should be willing to make for the sake of “freedom” or, as Rousseau would say, for the sake of the general will.

When freedom is confused with provision and when intervention is necessary in order for that provision to be delivered (as it inevitably must be, since the government can only give what it first takes away), those individuals who resist intervention become the enemies of freedom. Like those in Rousseau’s utopia, they must “be forced to be free.” Put another way, the state must force citizens to surrender those liberties which hinder government from optimizing its provision potential.

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Linguistic Gymnastics and the Definition of Marriage

Commenting on the decision made by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured below) that Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, I have pointed out that

The logic of the Attorney General’s argument goes a lot further than merely attacking traditional marriage. Just think about it: a definition of ‘marriage’ that includes both heterosexual unions and same-sex unions, still excludes unions with animals, polygamous unions, or ‘group marriages.’ But doesn’t this discriminate? After all, if someone is bisexual, then in order for their sexuality to be fully expressed, their ‘marriage’ must include a minimum of at least one person from each sex. At least, that is where the argument against “discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation” could go.

Suffice to say, any new definition of marriage that Obama may wish to proffer opens the door to an endless series of redefinition in the years to come. This is because what is true of the word marriage is true of any noun: to define a word as one thing is necessarily to exclude that word as being some other thing. A noun that can mean anything is a noun that can mean nothing.

Consequently, if we say that it is unconstitutional for the word ‘marriage’ to exclude anyone or anything, then we are beginning a process whereby the word must necessarily be eventually emptied of all content.

Suffice to say, if DOMA were set aside, then not only would a union between one man and one woman no longer have a monopoly on the term ‘marriage,’ but in principle any definition of marriage (even one broadened to encompass homosexual unions) could eventually be challenged as unconstitutional by an extension of the same logic.

In short, the word ‘marriage’ must finally come to cover anything we could possibly imagine. However, to do that would render the term incoherent, and that is something that not even the homosexuality community wishes to see happen.

To read more about this, visit my article 'DOMA and the Definition of Marriage.'

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Fast approaching $1.72 million every minute

Earlier this year the Washington Post reported that "The daunting tower of national, state and local debt in the United States will reach a level this year unmatched just after World War II and already exceeds the size of the entire economy, according to government estimates."

This echoes concerns I raised in my article "What the Treasury Department is not telling Americans about the National Debt" I pointed out that although the Treasury Department doesn't like to advertise the fact, but America’s national debt is larger than the total economies of China, the United Kingdom, and Australia combined and is quickly approaching or exceeding the USA's 14 trillion GDP. (It appears less than that in charts, because the government has been cooking the books since the Clinton Administration. They are not counting Social Security and Medicare obligations as part of the debt.) If the pattern continues over the next decade, the government will borrow approximately $1.72 million every minute." 

To learn more about the national debt, see  my article "What the Treasury Department is not telling Americans about the National Debt"

Beauty and Classical Education

The Spring 2010 edition of the quarterly journal for the Association of Classical and Christian schools had an article by Stephen Turley titled "Educational Aesthetics." It can be downloaded HERE.

Echoing some of the same themes I raised in my article on aesthetics that I wrote for 'Christianity and Society' as well as in my earlier series of posts on the objectivity of beauty, but applying them to an educational context, Turley comments on the latent relativism within so many Christians classrooms when it comes to aesthetics.

"I, too, have witnessed in my own teaching experience at both the high school and university levels how modernist assumptions have worked themselves out in our aesthetic conceptions, such that when called to give a basic account for the classical conception of Beauty, students entering my classroom consistently exemplify a complete and total devotion to aesthetic relativism....

Marie Stopes and “

Tuesday two weeks ago was the one hundredth anniversary of “International Women’s Day”, which occurs every year on March 8. On this day, various organizations throughout the world sponsor celebrations which, in the words of the Wikipedia, “[range] from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements.”

That sounds legitimate enough. After all, who wouldn’t want to celebrate the achievements of women or the respect and appreciation we owe them?

I began to get suspicious, however, when the name Marie Stopes kept popping up in association with this year’s festivities. A birth control pioneer in the early 20th century, Stopes is best remembered today for her views on “family planning.” But she is also distinguished by having an international chain of abortion clinics named after her.

Keep reading...

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The "Pioneer Spirit" and the American church

“…the Methodists,” Horace Bushnell noted in 1847, “have a ministry admirably adapted, as regards their mode of action, to the new West”. 

 
The American Methodist movement, which later became paradigmatic of the entire revivalist project, was successful precisely because it was able to capitalize on a certain temperament indigenous to the frontier of the American West.

When the New World had begun being colonized, it took a certain type of person to leave the established institutions and comforts of Europe to face the uncertainties and challenges waiting ahead. If you were not cut from the rugged, pioneer cloth, the new continent wouldn’t just be unappealing, it would break you. It is not hard to see how the spirit of the self-made pioneer gave momentum to Westward expansion or how it contributed to the atmosphere of entrepreneurship, independent thinking and rugged individualism that helped to make America so successful.

What has been given less attention is how these values increasingly became hallmarks of the American religious experience, which moulded itself around the strong individualism,  anti-institutionalism and entrepreneur spirit of the pioneers. The idea of the self-made pioneer, when unconsciously imported into one’s religious orientation, could only prime Americans for the semi-Pelagianism of Finney or that co-deification of Joseph Smith or the un-churchly flavour left in the wake of the revival articulated so profoundly by John Nevin in his interaction with Charles Hodge.

Islam in Spain

The year was 711. The Muslim warrior, Jebel al-Tariq, has just landed in Gibraltar with around 10,000 men, mostly indigenous North Africans. Tariq had collected these men in a sweep through North Africa in the early 700s, in which he established Muslim rule there.

From the rock of Gibraltar, which takes its name from him (Jebel al-Tariq, corrupted into Gibraltar), the Muslim hoards poured into Spain. Though ostensibly to intervene in a civil war among the Visigoths, Tariq made it clear to his fellow Muslims that his intentions were, in his own words, “To serve Islam.” That meant conquering the land.

al-Tariq was successful and for many centuries Spain suffered under Islamic rule. It took 700 years before Christians got their land back.

Ever since Christians recaptured Spain, Muslims have been itching to reclaim the land. You see, it is a fundamental tenant of Islamic theology that once a land has belonged to Islam, it always belongs to Islam.

For many years the idea of Muslims re-conquering Spain seemed like a pipe-dream. However, recently it has begun to look like it could become a reality. Earlier in the year I spoke with some Spanish Christians about the Muslim threat, and it is not a pretty picture. To find out what I learned, read my article at Alfred the Great Society titled, "Muslims Aim at Reconquering Spain."

How Uncle Sam Gets Your Money

In an article I wrote in October 2009, titled, "What the Treasury Department is not telling Americans about the National Debt" I explained how the government actually gets money. I pointed out that there are only three ways that a government can get funds to inject into the economy: tax, print or borrow.

Suppose government does the first: raises funds through taxation. In such a case, government can then only inject into the economy what it has first suctioned out, a point that was made with characteristic lucidity by Daniel Hannan in THIS short video clip.
  

Now although Western governments make liberal use of this option, the amount of revenue that is available through taxation is necessarily limited. For example, in order for America to meet its present commitments through taxes alone, the federal tax rate for each American household would have to increase by 42% by 2040 (a figure does not take into account the liabilities to business, and therefore to tax revenue, that always come as the corollary of burdensome taxation).

 

The other option is that government can print money ex nihilo. The problem is that governments which do that have never been able to resist the temptation to completely debase their currency, resulting in hyperinflation. All Western governments have handed over the authority to create money to private central banks (America’s version of this is called the Federal Reserve). But the banks do not create money through printing presses. Instead, they create new money electronically every time they issue a loan for more money than they actually have on deposit. The reason they can get away with this is because only a small percentage of commerce takes place with actual physical money. The commercial banks in America end up creating $98 for every $1 held on deposit, which means that most of the money in circulation is actually debt money. Since every loan increases the money supply (a supply that is represented in bank ledgers rather than hard cash), it also depreciates the relative value of the money held by everyone else. Thus, central banking is also inflationary. However, the requirement to pay interest curtails the borrowing to a certain degree. On the other hand, when governments print money or mint debased coinage, as in Weimar Germany and the last three centuries of the Roman Empire, they tend to completely debase the currency in a shorter period of time than happens under a central banking system.

 
What this means is that if the American government wants more money to spend then it can raise through taxation, the only option is to go to the banks and ask for a loan.
  


Further Reading

"What the Treasury Department is not telling Americans about the National Debt"


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Is Joseph Smith also among the Gnostics?

Joseph Smith embodied many of the tenets of classical Gnosticism which I have outline here. He did this in some of the explicit ways: for example, teaching an infinite regress of divine beings, holding out to his followers the promise of hidden knowledge and secret oracles, introducing an elaborate system of rites and ceremonies and levels of initiation and advocating.
 
While these facets of Smith’s religion had an almost point-by-point correspondence with the particulars of classical Gnosticism, it was his elitist ecclesiology that is perhaps the most significant since resonation so deeply with the broader spiritual narratives of the age. His thought was animated by the paradoxical conjunction of populism and elitism that was a key feature of classical Gnosticism’s dialectic. It was through colluding with the fashionable Platonism within 3rd century Mediterranean culture that classical Gnosticism developed its distinctively elitist tenor. Mormonism would also come to appropriate this symbiotic interplay of apparent opposites.  

Further Reading

Joseph Smith: Profile of a False Prophet

Eight Gnostic Myths You May Have Imbibed

Is Jonathan Edwards also among the Gnostics?

Against the Protestant Gnostics

The Strange Outbreak of Canadian Gnosticism

The Great Awakening and the Problem of Mediation

Religion by the People, of the People, for the People

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Joseph Smith's Responsiveness to Provincial Opinions

Mormonism, noted Gordon Wood in his inaugural Tanner Lecture for the Mormon History Association. “was born at a peculiar moment in the history of the United States, and it bears the marks of that birth. Only the culture of early-nineteenth century evangelical America could have produced it.”

Similarly, Fawn M. Brodie has suggested that The Book of Mormon, “can best be explained, not by Joseph’s ignorance nor by his delusions, but by his responsiveness to the provincial opinions of his time.” Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, 2d ed. (New York, 1971),

What these scholars are driving at is the often overlooked reality that Joseph Smith was not a spiritual innovator. He was merely a conduit of all the prejudices and provincial opinions already present in 19th century New England. Smith's skill was his ability to repackage presupposition to which the popular religious culture already subscribed, often without even knowing it. He harnessed the assumptions, aspirations and popular religious themes of his day to make his otherwise incredible story fit within the plausibility structures of the time. Like the false prophets described in the Bible, he preached what the itching ears of the masses wanted to hear. To learn more about this aspect, read my article "Joseph Smith: Profile of a False Prophet."

 

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I Love Gilbert & Sullivan

I always wanted to watch a Gilbert and Sullivan production but never had the chance until recently when a friend signed us up for the video rental service Netflix. I found that I absolutely LOVE Gilbert and Sullivan. The combination of jocularity and mock seriousness, together with very tuneful melodies, couldn't make for more enjoyment. Here is one that I particularly love that I found off Youtube.

The Lost Tools of Learning

Dorothy Sayers' wonderful essay 'The Lost Tools of Learning' should be read by all educationalists.

Sayers begins by presenting a brief Apologia for the need to return to an older paradigm of education. She draws our attention to the failures of the contemporary school system, compared to education in the Middle Ages. While acknowledging that the literacy rate in Western Europe has never been higher, she notes that the influence of mindless advertising and mass propaganda has also reached unprecedented levels (had she lived long enough to witness the internet, I think she would have exploded). Her conclusion is that although schools may be churning out people with lots of knowledge there is clearly a deficit in understanding. In other words, schools are not training their students how to think.

The Martyrdom of Perpetua

Stained-glass window of St Perpetua of Carthage (church of Notre-Dame of Vierzon, France, 19th century): martyrdom of St Perpetua and her fellows in the stadium of Carthage; Saint Felicity on her left. Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetua_and_Felicity

The date is 202 and the Roman emperor, Septimius Severus, has just enacted a law prohibiting the spread of Christianity and Judaism throughout the Roman empire.

Alarmed by the steady growth of Christianity (which may have been as much as 40% per decade throughout the second century), Emperor Septimius hopes his decree will contain the Christian threat and strengthen his kingdom.

While persecution was nothing new to Christians in the early third century, this was the first time there was a universal decree forbidding conversion. If someone was discovered to have become a Christian, the choice offered by the emperor was simple: either curse Jesus and make an offering to the Roman gods or be executed.

“Many martyrs are daily burned, confined, or beheaded, before our eyes,” observed Clement of Alexandria, describing conditions during the “terrible reign” of Severus.