In recent columns, I looked at what happened to a religion heavily focused on hierarchy and clergy when it was cut loose from those moorings – how in fact it reverted to what we might call a default kind of religion. I noted for instance the emphasis on sacred places and objects, on charismatic individuals, and the central focus on preserving relations with the dead. Believers are also drawn by the prospect of healing. I produced a ten point system,... Read more
After literally decades of planning and delay, Martin Scorsese has finally released his film of Shusaku Endo’s classic novel Silence, about the persecution of Catholic Christians in seventeenth century Japan. It looks magnificent. (You can watch the trailer here). In the New York Times, Paul Elie has a wonderful article on The Passion of Martin Scorsese, about the film, and more generally about Scorsese’s relationship to faith. The “passion” pun is obvious enough, but very appropriate. Silence has been Scorsese’s... Read more
I have been posting about a source on religion in Wales around 1715 , which illustrates how Christian communities maintain themselves when church structures and institutions have been removed. The author, Erasmus Saunders, tells us a lot about the rural society of his time, and its religious life. Almost as important, though, is what he does not tell us. Although this is not really a live argument these days, reading Saunders makes nonsense of what was once a powerful historical... Read more
In Augustine’s Confessions, at the end of a discussion of infancy and childhood, there is a beautiful passage about thankfulness. [Note the quotations that follow are from Maria Boulding’s translation]. Much of Book I baffles contemporary readers, who think that Augustine is rather too hard on himself and others. Augustine insists that the “only innocent feature in babies is the weakness of their frames; the minds of infants are far from innocent.” Babies glare “with livid fury” at their fellow nurslings.... Read more
Around eighteen years ago, my wife and I drove out into the countryside beyond Louisville to find somewhere quaint to attend church one Sunday morning. It’s not hard to find quaint churches nearly anywhere in rural America and certainly not in Kentucky. We found a Reformed Baptist church. It was God’s will that we did so. By Reformed, I think they meant “Calvinist.” At the very least they very much believed in human depravity. The preacher that Sunday began by... Read more
In the wake of a divisive election, we should revisit Abraham Lincoln's original 1863 proclamation of a national day of Thanksgiving. We'll find not only gratitude, but the virtues of humility and empathy. Read more
For a “think tank” of sorts, I find myself writing a white paper on education (yep, the whole shebang) and its current aspirations and ailments. It’s a tough assignment, for how does one make sense of such a large category. Here’s my first swipe at defining “institutional parameters.” I welcome feedback! I. Institutional Parameters “Education” is an immense category that defines a field of human endeavor—traceable in the Western tradition to Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum—that attempts to instruct the... Read more
Western Protestants are familiar with the idea of Christianity as a faith of the book, of the word written, read, and proclaimed. Historically, though, a great many Christians have learned their faith through other means, including the visual arts and especially music, and such non-literary forms are very common today in rising churches, in Africa and elsewhere. To get a sense of how such instruction works, I return to the story I told last time, as Anglican cleric Erasmus Saunders... Read more
As the reality of Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat sinks in, as pundits jockey to offer the definitive postmortem and journalists attempt to decipher what, precisely, an impending Trump presidency might entail, public focus has largely shifted away from Clinton herself. For nearly four decades Hillary Clinton has found herself at or near the center of American politics—as first lady of Arkansas and then of the nation, as US Senator, two-time presidential contender, and Secretary of State. Until last week, when... Read more
In Eastcheap, near Fenchurch St. in London, stands the medieval church of St. Margaret Pattens. Founded in 1067 and rebuilt by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1666, it slowly lost its congregation. It was closed as a parish church in 1952—more than 900 years after opening its doors. St. Margaret Pattens still offers some weekday services to those working around its urban location. It also remains open to passerbys like me, interested in canopied pews and an 18th-century... Read more
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