The Managerial Elite

January 13, 2020 By Gene Veith

Our new class system is not based on the socio-economic hierarchies of upper, middle, and lower classes; nor do our class struggles follow the socialist analysis of property-owners vs. the working class. Rather, our new class conflict is between the working class and the “managerial elite.”

So says University of Texas professor Michael Lind, who sees the conflict between the college-educated managerial class and the non-college-educated majority looming behind our political polarization, not only in the United States but in other Western democracies, where populist blue-collar workers–who tend to be patriotic, religious, and critical of immigration–are contending against the white-collar cosmopolitans who run the companies they work for, the cultural institutions that try to control how they think, and the government bureaucracies that rule their lives.

This class conflict, Lind says, has given us the Donald Trump presidency, with both his populist supporters and the furious “resistance” from the managerial class, but it has also manifested itself in the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom, the “yellow vest” insurgents in France, and related movements throughout Europe.

Now there have been other analyses of the conflicts between “populists” and “elitists,” often with a partisan spin. But Lind strikes me as much more rigorous than other analysts in connecting these political and cultural factions to class divisions.

Lind develops his observations in his book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite, which will be released later this month. He summarizes his thesis in an article published in the Wall Street Journal entitled Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite. This article is available through subscription only, so let me just give you some highlights:

The deepest cleavage in Western democracies yawns between college-educated managers and professionals—a third of the population, at most—and the majority who lack college educations. . . .

The major geographic divide in Western democracies is not between urban and rural areas but between expensive hubs or urban cores where professionals and immigrant service workers cluster, on the one hand, and exurbs and satellite towns on the peripheries of metro areas, where most working class people find jobs and low-cost housing. . . .

Between 2010 and 2018, whites with a college degree fell from 40% to 29% of Republican voters; Democrats now win an overwhelming share of the country’s most highly educated counties. . . .

These classes are following their class interests:

Unwilling to admit that the center-left has been largely captured by the managerial elite, many pundits and academics on the left insist that mindless bigotry, rather than class interests, explains the attraction of many working-class voters to populist parties that promise to restrict trade and immigration. But it is just as rational for workers to prefer a seller’s market in labor as it is for employers to prefer a buyer’s market in labor. Blue-collar workers who have abandoned center-left parties for populist movements bring with them the historic suspicion of large-scale immigration that was typical of organized labor for generations.

What once were different subcultures of the highly-educated class–academics, corporate managers, politicians–have now come together, Lind says, into a true ruling class.

What we might call “woke capitalism” represents a fusion of the three elites at the commanding heights of the economy, the culture and politics; they increasingly constitute a single conformist caste.

This newly consolidated ruling class is best described as “liberaltarian,” combining moderately libertarian views in economics with cultural progressivism in values. From its citadels in a few big cities, this oligarchy periodically notifies the working-class majority what values and opinions about sex, immigration and other topics it must immediately adopt without debate, on pain of being blacklisted by the private sector, prosecuted by the government or censored or erased by the media.

Recall that the managerial elite constitutes only about one-third of the population. In many ways, they rule the majority, but the majority has the potential of out-voting them. As a result, says Lind, the managerial elite favors government by bureaucracy (as in the regulations of the U.S. Executive Branch or the European Union in Brussels), the judicial system (whose members will tend to belong to their class), transnational agreements (global trade agreements, the EU, the UN, treaties having priority over local jurisdictions).

The most democratic and responsive branch of the government is the legislature, which has been stripped of its power, its centrality, and its reputation over the last few generations. Local and state governments too, which are by their nature closer to voters, have also lost clout.

Ordinary voters, says Lind, have lost other “tribunes,” the term coming from the Roman official whose sole duty was to protect the interests of the common people. Labor unions, political machines, and–significantly–the church would play this role, but now they have all lost influence. But people still rally to those they perceive as political “tribunes,” such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, even though they too come from the elite.

Lind calls for the creation of “powerful legislatures” on the local, state, and national level, to empower working-class citizens. He concludes:

Ending the new class war in the U.S. and Europe will require a new era of genuine power-sharing by today’s power-hoarding managerial overclass. The trade unions, powerful religious organizations and local political machines of the 20th century will not return. Their 21st-century equivalents are needed, in the form of mass membership organizations accountable to working-class people rather than to elite donors or granters. Only genuine bottom-up institutions can allow working-class citizens to exercise countervailing power against the elite by pooling the only resource they have: their numbers.

I would like to ask Prof. Lind some questions. If the managerial elite is such an oligarchy, a mere 33% aligned against the American majority, why did tribune of the people Donald Trump lose the popular vote? Clearly, quite a few blue collar folks voted against him, including, of course, the black working class. Where does “identity politics” fit into this class-based analysis?

Ironically, today both parties are claiming, at least in their rhetoric, to champion the cause of the working class and to oppose big corporations. Is there still the pull of the old class struggle of “the rich” against “the poor” in at least some voters? I suppose the “managers” tend to be middle-income, rather than rich, so they can oppose the wealthy owners and stockholders of the companies they work for, even though the even smaller number of those who are “rich” may themselves be of the managerial class in their background and values.

Clearly, this alleged class struggle is not just a matter of the dominant political parties, neither of which is homogenous in any way. Manager-types and the college educated populate both parties, as do blue collar workers. Indeed, the former used to be associated with the Republicans, and the latter used to be associated with the Democrats. Perhaps, though, Prof. Lind’s thesis could still be applied within the parties, with the “managerial elite” constituting the Republican “establishment” that Trumpian Republicans are always complaining about, with the Democratic working class base resisting the harder left pull of Democratic managerial activists.

Also, of course, quite a few college-educated folks reject the values of the managerial elite, as Lind describes them, despite their own membership in this class, just as quite a few members of the working class go along with them.

I don’t think class analysis can account for everything, but it can account for some things. And Prof. Lind has made some helpful contributions to this approach.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

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The Grim Reaper

January 6, 2020 By Gene Veith

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When most Americans think of technology, they think of the internet, and drones are ways to get their online purchases faster. But our technology as applied by the military is staggering in its lethality and its reach.

On Friday, a drone with a 66′ wingspan known as the Reaper hovered over Baghdad. It was being flown by pilots on the ground in either an airbase in Nevada (if this was an Air Force operation) or in an office building in Langley, Virginia (if this was a CIA operation). At President Trump’s command, the Reaper fired two laser-guided Hellfire missiles into the automobile of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was reportedly “shredded” in the blast. It also may have ignited another war in the Middle East–this time between the United States and Iran. Or, as I think, it may prove to be the catalyst for our final withdrawal from that region once and for all.

We have been using the Reaper against terrorists, such as leaders of ISIS, with little negative consequence. A terrorist, though, is a lawless individual, a stateless criminal who represents only himself and his twisted cause. It’s another thing to use the Reaper against a military officer in the chain of command of a sovereign nation. This is true even if the terrorist and the military officer have been doing the same things.

Soleimani, head of the elite Quds corps in the Revolutionary Guard–“Quds” being the Islamic term for Jerusalem, which shows the force’s ultimate goal–had been organizing Iranian-backed militias all around the world. These have become a force in Iraq, threatening American and allied forces there and undermining the attempts to build a stable Iraqi government. One of these militias recently killed an American contractor, which led to an American attack on an Iranian installation in Iraq, which led to the pro-Iranian mob that attacked the American embassy, which, under international law, is American sovereign territory. Soleimani was likely behind all of those attacks–as well as recent assaults on ocean vessels and Saudi oil operations–and was planning more. So, in a final level of retaliation, the grim Reaper was called for Soleimani.

The question is not whether or not he deserved it. He surely did. But Soleimani was the representative of an entire nation and was acting on its behalf. Despite our decades-long conflicts with Iran, we are not in a formal state of war with Iran. That may change, if Iran declares war on us, and though commanders-in-chief have a great deal of latitude in what they may do to defend the United States–including sometimes acting against undeclared enemies–to assassinate an important government official has much bigger ramifications than killing an Osama bin Laden.

Mental experiment: Should the United States send a Reaper against other nation’s leaders who cause us trouble, such as North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un? He surely deserves the death penalty, but he is the head of state, bad as he is, of a sovereign nation, and there is no higher lawful authority to convict him. How about Vladimir Putin, who has tried to interfere with American elections, no less, and may also have contributed to American deaths in Syria. In fact, Russia is an ally of Iran and a supporter of the Shi’ite radicals of the sort Soleimani was organizing. Most of us would draw back from a drone attack on Putin, not only because of the state sovereignty issue but because the consequences would be so negative for the United States that it would not be worth it, even if he deserved it.

Yes, we should react to the killing of the American contractor. And to the 500 or so Americans reportedly killed due to Soleimani’s actions. But, remind me again, why was that contractor in Iraq? Why were the 500 American troops stationed there? The reason at first was to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Then the reason was nation building, to bring freedom and democracy to the region. Recently, to justify the continuing presence of several thousand troops, the reason is to prevent chaos. Well, chaos is what we have.

Now Iran is flying the red flag above its Mosques and vowing to avenge Soleimani with the blood of Americans. These are Shi’a Muslims, followers of Ali–Muhammed’s son-in-law and, in their mind, his true successor–who was murdered by the Sunni caliphs. Theirs is a religion that revels in martyrdom, suffering, and vengeance. These are people who celebrate their holy day by flagellating themselves with bloody chains. To this day the Shi’ites want to avenge Ali, which is why they are the enemies of mainline Sunni Islam, such as those of Saudi Arabia. Israel has been added to their never-ending hate list, and now the United States is being added to that company.

Iran says that they have identified 35 American sites that they will target. President Trump has responded by saying that he has identified 52 Iran sites–one for each American hostage back in the Carter administration–that he will attack if Iran moves against U.S. assets. Iran says that they have restarted their nuclear weapons program. The U.S. is sending thousands more troops to reinforce and protect the relatively small number already there. This kind of escalation could mean full-scale war with Iran.

Many of us supported Donald Trump precisely because he promised to keep America out of “endless wars.” Trumpian conservatism set itself in opposition to “neo-conservatism,” which pursued the idealistic goals of spreading freedom and democracy and in doing so kept starting those endless wars.

Hardcore Trump fans supported his desire to get us out of Mideast wars, and, now, if he starts one of his own, they will support that. On the other side, there are Democratic members of the “Resistance” who are accusing the president of a “wag the dog” tactic, starting a war in order to help his re-election, riding a wave of patriotic fervor by pro-war Americans. But I see no constituency for another war in the Middle East. Trump’s base of working class populists–the sort who usually fight our wars–and anti-establishment conservatives do not favor another war. This is not 2003, when virtually all Americans were itching to pay back someone, anyone, for 9/11. The nation today is still exhausted from the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We may be politically polarized, but right now conservatives and liberals, the working class and middle class, Americans from every region and race and social level–no one wants another war. The only exception might be the handful of neo-conservatives who still remain, but these are invariably never-Trumpers.

Here is what I think will happen. President Trump will take the occasion of the current deterioration to pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria once and for all. This is his instinct. This is in accord with what he believes. The Reaper attack and maybe some other retaliatory actions will allow us to save face. We will leave claiming victory, feeling a sense of honor, while scornfully leaving these ungrateful regions to solve their own problems.

Already, within days of the Reaper attack, the Iraqi Parliament has passed a resolution demanding that United States forces leave their country. This is reportedly not binding on the Prime Minister, the chief executive of the country who must make that kind of decision. But, facing the high feelings of his population, he surely will. This would remove any legal basis for our being there. If we stay, we would be an occupying power. But why stay? This is the perfect pretext for President Trump to do what he has always promised to do: Bring all of the troops home.

Yes, the chaos will remain. Yes, we will need to worry about a nuclear-armed Iran. We will go from one extreme to another, from interventionism to isolationism, with no sense of how to devise a system that can keep the peace by a measured threat of force and multi-lateral action. And the current Democratic presidential candidates are not offering anything that would be helpful towards this end.

But if we are in another Middle East War, Trump will lose. If he brings Americans home, he will win. Trump will soon realize that and act accordingly.

Otherwise, we will reap the whirlwind.

Illustration: MQ9 Reaper, U.S. Air Force photo by Paul Ridgeway [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

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Looking Forward, Looking Back

December 26, 2019 By Gene Veith

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The ancient Romans had a deity named Janus, who was the god of thresholds and gateways, and thus, by extension, other kinds of transitions. He had two faces, one looking forward and the other other looking back. For that reason, thanks to Julius Caesar, who worked out what would become the Julian Calendar, the month named after Janus–January–became the first month of the new year. The coming of the new year was an occasion to look back over the previous year and look ahead to the year to come. That’s a good way to celebrate New Year’s on a personal level, and it has long been the practice of this blog.

On the days leading up to New Year’s–this year, that will be Friday, December 27, and Monday, December 30–we will look back on 2019. The exercise will culminate on New Year’s Eve–Tuesday, December 31–at which time we will look at the predictions we made last year about what would happen in 2019. By “we,” I mean you readers who made predictions, as well as myself. We will then acclaim the person who made the best prediction. In addition, we will look at predictions made by alleged experts decades ago about what 2019 would be like.

Then the next day, on the Kalends of the Month of Janus–that is, New Year’s Day, January 1–we will look ahead by making predictions about what will happen in 2020. We will check those predictions on New Year’s Eve, 2020, and the cycle will repeat itself.

So be thinking about your predictions. Don’t worry! The Deuteronomy 18:22 rule about what is to be done to prophets who predict something that does not, in fact, come true, will not be enforced, since we are just speculating, not claiming spiritual revelations. Making it especially interesting, 2020 will be a Presidential Election Year, so though your prediction may well be have to do with our national exercise in democracy, don’t limit yourself to that topic.

The winning predictions will be those that are specific and surprising, the kind that will make us wonder, “How did anyone possibly know that?” I learned a term for what we will be looking for: a black swan, defined as “an event which is extremely rare and unexpected but has very significant consequences.” The lexicographers at the link add this:

Black-swan events are characterized by three main criteria: first, they are surprising, falling outside the realm of usual expectation; second, they have a major effect (sometimes even of historical significance); and third, with the benefit of hindsight they are often rationalized as something that could have been foreseen had the facts been examined carefully enough.

Yes, they are unpredictable, but see if you can predict one.

Finally, I will leave you with another aid to your year end meditations, a song by the great Australian singer-songwriter Slim Dusty entitled “Looking Forward, Looking Back.” The lyrics are here. (Note especially the third stanza, beginning, “These are strange days. . . .”) And here is the song, in one of the best music videos ever:

Illustration: Statue of Janus, photo by lienyuan lee [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons

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Amid the Cold of Winter

December 25, 2019 By Gene Veith

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No, Christmas did not have its origins in a pagan holiday. Scholars now know (see this and this) that the Feast of Sol Invictus, Juvenalia, and similar celebrations were, if anything, influenced by Christmas, rather than the other way around. But lots of religions and cultures do have winter festivals of one kind or another. What is striking, though, is how different Christmas is from what we might expect.

Winter is cold. Winter is lifeless, as the birds have migrated, many of the animals are hibernating, and the plant life to all appearances is dead. Winter is a time of starvation. Livestock would be slaughtered at the beginning of winter and the fermentation of alcohol would be completed, so there would be feasting for a while, but only as a prelude to the so-called famine time. Winter is dark, with the nights being longer than the days. This is especially true in northern latitudes, some of which have nights that last close to the entire 24 hours. The Winter Solstice, which is just a few days before Christmas and which has its own religious observances, is the longest night of the year.

You had to keep the Yule log burning, or you would freeze in the dark. The religious observances in winter and the Winter Solstice were desperate pleas for the light to come back, with sacrifices to fend off the spirits of darkness and to implore the sun to return.

Winter was a grim time for most of the world throughout human history. And yet, for Christians, their winter festival, in the words of the song, is “the most wonderful time of the year.” It’s all joy, good cheer, and merry-making. To be sure, Christians also suffered–and many still suffer–in the cold of winter. The old Christmas observances included–and still include– beneficence to the suffering, as seen in the carol “Good King Wenceslas,” Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” and today’s Salvation Army kettles. Somehow, Christmas makes us able to sentimentalize winter weather, so that snow, ice, and the cold are no longer mortal threats but constitute a “winter wonderland”!

Conversely, in the Spring, which one would think would be a season for happiness and abundance, is the saddest and most somber observance in the Christian calendar. “Lent,” a word that just means “Spring,” is a time to contemplate one’s own sins and the suffering and death of Christ, who paid their penalty. But in other religions and cultures, Spring is a time of fertility and revelry. Once again, Christianity seems out of step with “natural” religion.

But Lent culminates in Easter, and Christ’s resurrection from the dead is symbolized by the new life that is springing back to life out of the dead ground. And immediately after the Winter Solstice (December 21) is when Christmas is celebrated, the days start to get longer, whereupon the light begins to conquer the darkness. So the Christian holy-days are in line with the symbolism of the seasons after all, sort of.

Still, the Christian holidays are surprising. At the point of our greatest darkness, coldness, and death, that is when Jesus comes. This is the message of Christmas, the theology of the cross, and the proclamation of the Gospel to those stricken by the Law.

Whereas the Gospel of Matthew tells about the Wise Men and the Gospel of Luke tells about the shepherds, the Christmas account in the Gospel of John starts even further back and unpacks what it all means:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. . . .⁹The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. . . . ¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1)

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). Of course we are going to celebrate Christmas in the teeth of winter. Of course we will do so with lights–candles, Yule logs, brightly-colored electric lights–gifts, emblems of God’s grace, and plants that are alive in winter.

The old Christmas carol “Lo, how a Rose E’er Blooming” gives us a rose from the stem of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1)–that is, the Son of David, Jesus–that blooms not in the Spring, as other flowers do, but in the depths of winter:

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flower bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half-gone was the night.

The rose in the snow, like the fir tree in “O, Tannenbaum“–and thus our Christmas trees–depicts life in a season of death. This is Jesus and the gift that He brings.

Illustration: “Winter Landscape: Christmas Eve,” (1890) by Fritz von Uhde* [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

*For more works by the 19th century Lutheran artist Fritz von Uhde and discussions of how he expresses his theology in his art, see this, this, and this.

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Luther & the Controversy over Liberalism

December 19, 2019 By Gene Veith

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Our “liberal” system of government (from the Latin word for “free,” not in the sense of the political left) has given us freedom, individual rights, democracy, and free market capitalism. It has also, arguably, promoted individual autonomy, broken up social institutions such as communities and families, and created a climate of moral relativism and religious indifference.

As we’ve blogged about, both the left and the right are having second thoughts about liberal democracy. Prominent conservative thinkers such as Patrick Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed, are questioning the whole enterprise. The controversy looms behind the debates, such as that between Sohrab Amari and David French, of whether conservatives should prioritize freedom or the common good.

Roman Catholics are delving into the religious side of these issues. Some conservative Catholics are strongly pro-American (the USA being the quintessential liberal nation) and are defending liberty and capitalism. Others, though, are arguing that liberalism, including religious liberty, is incompatible with Catholicism and with Christianity as a whole, looking instead to apply the ideology of “integralism,” in which all of life, including the government, is integrated under the temporal rule of the Pope.

So where does Lutheranism come down in all of this? Is liberalism compatible with Lutheranism? Many scholars on both sides of the issue say that Luther with the Reformation he initiated was one of the causes of the rise of liberalism, with some praising that contribution and others blaming him for it.

Two recent articles take up the question. The latest Concordia Theological Quarterly includes an article by Hillsdale history professor Korey D. Maas entitled Luther and Liberalism: A Tale of Two Tales (Or, A Lutheran Showdown Worth Having). Texas A&M political scientist James R. Rogers interacts with that article in a Law & Liberty piece entitled Luther and Liberalism. Both scholars, by the way, are members of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

Prof. Maas points out that there are four possibilities, and a substantial amount of scholarship has been written to support each of the first three positions:

1. Luther was a proto-liberal, and that’s a good thing.

2. Luther was a proto-liberal, and that’s a bad thing.

3. Luther was not a proto-liberal, and that’s a bad thing.

4. Luther was not a proto-liberal, and that’s a good thing.

The fourth also holds some possibilities, though it has not been developed to the extent that the others have been. That Luther’s influence has been found in all of these incompatible positions suggests that his thought is very strange or perhaps very complex. Let’s go through each of them.

1. Luther was a proto-liberal, and that’s a good thing.

This was the dominant view for the past several centuries. In fact, Prof. Maas shows that Luther’s political writings do anticipate those of John Locke, no less, the so-called “Father of Liberalism.” Says Prof. Maas of Luther,

When [Luther] does “clearly describe” temporal government, he regularly does so in what can sound astonishingly like Lockean terms. To note only some of the most obvious examples: As Locke will do in his Second Treatise of Government, Luther would insist that “temporal government has laws which extend no further than to life and property and external affairs.” Therefore, as Locke would do in his published A Letter concerning Toleration, Luther counseled that temporal authorities should “let men believe this or that as they are able and willing,” in part because, just as Locke would argue, it is “impossible to command or compel anyone by force to believe.” Finally, and despite his early and firm rejection of any right of resistance, Luther, like Locke, would eventually acknowledge and advocate a right to resist even duly elected authorities. In this light, it is perhaps not surprising that contemporary scholars regularly conclude that it is “largely right to argue for a connection between Protestant theology and the emergence of political liberalism.”

2. Luther was a proto-liberal, and that’s a bad thing.

Opponents of Liberalism, though, have blamed Luther for his influence. Part of the Catholic polemic against Luther has always been that he started his own church and thus destroyed Christendom (never mind that he was excommunicated against his will) and that his gospel of free forgiveness undermined morality (never mind his crusade against the moral corruption of the medieval church). But lately such charges have been revived by critics of modernity. The Radical Orthodox blame Luther for the dominance of nominalism, which is said to have born fruit in scientism and materialism. Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society blames Luther and the Reformation for “a hyperpluralism of divergent secular and religious truth claims[,] . . . individuals pursuing their desires whatever they happen to be[,] . . . Highly bureaucratized sovereign states wield[ing] a monopoly of public power[,] . . . The hegemonic cultural glue [. . . of . . .] all-pervasive capitalism and consumerism. . . . There is no shared, substantive common good, nor are there any realistic prospects for devising one” (p. 377).

3. Luther was not a proto-liberal, and that’s a bad thing.

At the very same time that Luther is being both praised and blamed for his liberalism, he has been accused of giving us Hitler’s Germany. This is the “Shirer thesis,” named for the American journalist William Shirer who developed this idea in his popular study The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This is the Luther who called for the suppression of the Peasant Revolt and who wrote On the Jews and Their Lies.

When Luther advocated the violent persecution of Jews, he was obviously contradicting his Lockean writings on religious toleration and liberty, as well as his earlier defense of Jews in That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew. Luther clearly did not always uphold his own stated beliefs, but that personal failure does not invalidate them. (See Uwe Siemon-Netto, The Fabricated Luther for a critical examination of the Shirer thesis.)

But there was certainly a “conservative,” non-liberal side to Luther. He tended to advocate radical submission to the temporal authorities (except as Maas indicates, above); he supported the medieval economic order, including the repudiation of charging interest for loans; he supported the medieval social order, with their sense of community and division of labor. He retained the sacramentalism, the liturgy, the calendar, the creeds, and customs of the historic church.

4. Luther was not a proto-liberal, and that’s a good thing.

Again, Maas says this dimension of Luther is not so developed, but he suggests that it could be. And Prof. Rogers comes close to this view in making the case that nearly everything in Luther’s theology and social writing has its origins in medieval thought and social movements. Luther, he says, is very much a man of his times. He may have been a catalyst, but only because his teachings struck such a chord with people already oriented to them. He was not “original,” nor would he have wanted to be. As such, he was not “modern,” nor could he have been truly “liberal.”

Luther being praised and criticized both for being liberal and for being conservative is reminiscent of what G. K. Chesterton says about Christianity being attacked from all angles for contradictory reasons. “Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape” (Orthodoxy, Chapter 6).

Perhaps Luther can show us a way to keep what is good about the past, while “reforming” it to allow for freedom and the other good things of modern life. Maybe he can show us a way towards liberal conservatism, or conservative liberalism.

Illustration: Portrait of Luther, workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

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Moloch at the Colosseum

November 15, 2019 By Gene Veith

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If you visit the Colosseum in Rome, where thousands of Christians were martyred, you will pass at the entrance an enormous image of Moloch, the gruesome Canaanite deity that demanded the sacrifice of infants and small children.

The idol, modeled after a depiction in the classic silent film Cabiria, is part of an exhibit on ancient Carthage, where Moloch was worshiped. Many conservative Catholics and Christians in general are unnerved by the presence of the idol on what they consider sacred ground. The Colosseum, the stadium where Rome staged its gladiator fights and other entertainments (including the torture of Christians) is owned and operated by the Vatican, which must have given permission for the exhibit and the installation.

The controversy over the Moloch image has become tied to another controversy over the use of an Amazonian fertility idol to the goddess Pachamama in a series of ceremonies, including one at the Vatican gardens at which the Pope was present. The events, honoring the Amazonian Synod that was considering ordaining female priests, included indigenous worshippers prostrating themselves before the idol and a liturgical prayer to the goddess. Some conservative Catholics later stole the idols and threw them into the Tiber river. They were recovered and the Pope apologized.

Defenders of the statue say that it’s simply a part of a historical, cultural exhibit about Rome’s ancient rival and that no religious significance was intended. Fine. But why wasn’t the figure relegated to the context of the other exhibits inside, rather than “welcoming” (the word used in the press release) visitors at the entrance of the Colosseum itself? True, statues of other pagan gods, such as Jupiter and Mercury, can be found everywhere in Rome. But Moloch is particularly problematic.

So what’s the issue with Moloch? This is no ordinary animistic image. Even the Greek and Roman pagans were horrified by Moloch and how he was worshiped. The classical writers associated Moloch with Cronus, whom the Romans called Saturn, one of the old gods who devoured his own children until he was overthrown by his child Zeus. Cleitarchus writes of Carthage,

There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the ‘grin’ is known as ‘sardonic laughter,’ since they die laughing.

Diodorus writes,

There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.

Plutarch is especially descriptive:

… but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.

Carthage was an outpost of the Canaanite civilization that was in conflict with that of the children of Israel. And the Bible expressly and explicitly addresses Moloch and his worship by child sacrifice:

²¹You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 18:21)

20 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ²“Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. ³I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. ⁴And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, ⁵then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech. (Leviticus 20:1-5)

¹⁰And [King Josiah] defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech. (2 Kings 23:10)

³⁵They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. (Jeremiah 332:35)

Those last two verses indicate that, despite the Levitical prohibitions and despite the natural feelings of parents for their children–exhibited even by Carthaginian mothers who had sold their children–many Israelites nevertheless killed their own sons and daughters in offerings to this horrible god.

And, indeed, this temptation remains. Some prolifers have related today’s abortion epidemic–in which parents sacrifice their own children to career goals or lifestyle plans–to Moloch worship.

I have been working with John Kleinig on his translation of J. G. Hamann‘s London Writings, which includes his commentary on Biblical texts. Commenting on a Levitical passage against child sacrifice, Hamann says that Satan has always feared the “seed of the woman”–that is, Christ–that, as prophesied immediately after the Fall, would be his undoing. Says Hamann, “this fear moved him to use so many strategies to divert humans from reproduction and to murder children.” This accounts for Satan’s emphasis on tempting people to sexual immorality and to harm children, as in Moloch worship, and, we could add, infanticide, child abuse, and abortion.

Since, as St. Paul says, “what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons” (1 Cor 10:20), Moloch is clearly demonic. Pope Francis may be liberal, but he believes in demonic possession and is pro-life, so he should certainly be sensitive to these issues.

At any rate, it appears that we are back to having to contend with old-school idolatry, with Moloch becoming a fitting deity for our culture of death.

Photo of the idol of Moloch used in the film Calibria, the model for the Colosseum exhibit, in the National Museum of Cinema in Turin, by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France – Le musée du cinéma #Turin#, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10476540 via Wikimedia Commons

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