Hope and I did not know what to do. There were practical choices and yet Father Richard was suggesting a crazy option. We wished that someone would build kindergarten through college education, but we knew that we could not. We had nothing, were sad, and practical was practicable. The practicle option was not here and we would have to leave the city of the twenty-first century: Houston. Houston? We had thought God had called us here, but that was gone with... Read more
Today social media gave me a chance to ‘find’ the six people who would come to a hypothetical Thanksgiving dinner. Since I have some very interesting friends, this gave me a list that would be a wonderful dinner party, but not Thanksgiving dinner. (I am dubious that a platform like Twitter would give me the brightest and the best of my friends anyway!) Family friendships, and they should exist, are different. Thanksgiving dinner is a family dinner. Friendship is might,... Read more
Sometimes we are paid what we are due, that’s just. Thank God, often we do not get what we are due for our wrong choices, that is mercy. Many times in life we did nothing to earn what we get and we get goodness. The proper response to unearned favor, grace, is thankfulness. If I am in my right mind, thankfulness is natural, a response in love to love. I did not make the world, but it is good. I... Read more
Growing up and going to graduate school in Rochester, New York meant Frederick Douglass was everywhere: an icon of greatness. That’s good, as far it goes, but an icon should point to the man, the African-American man, and not keep us from his reality. We need his reality, the man who was a real man, Lincoln’s equal. David W. Blight has written a brilliant book about one of the greatest Americans that demonstrates why he is an icon, but also... Read more
A jingle from my childhood went: Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited you. Party pooper.” This was not Shakespeare or even very nice, but there was truth to it. Every party does have a pooper and come the Holidays this is a role much to be avoided. There is no party so excellent, so God-breathed, that some serious soul will not be offended. When Jesus came he managed to go to enough excellent events the party poopers... Read more
“Be thankful,” the radio preacher said. My immediate reaction, God help me, was crabbiness. “I will be thankful if I wish to be so,” I murmured. “This is like the oddlings who tell me to cheer up . . . Inauthentic moralism.” Pausing on My Reaction to Preaching SInce irritation at earnest moralism (especially from one’s Christian childhood) is the foundation of sixty-six point six percent (or so) of all Christian college professor’s public intellectual work, this reaction is not surprising... Read more
Religious Liberty is the Fundamental Human Liberty I have been listening to a biography of Peter the Great of Russia. One lesson is how rulers have always had freedom of conscience. They were rulers, in part, because they, and sometimes they alone, could live as they thought they must. Christian societies inherited systems from pagans and though we immediately began expanding human rights and dignity for all subjects, most often only the ruler was allowed full freedom of conscience. This... Read more
Some cultures die as men of iron and blood. Nobody mourns them. If they had some virtue, then they went out standing. If they were mostly brutal tyrants, then the world is a better place when they are gone. Then there are cultures that amuse themselves to death in a riot of bread and circuses. By the time the barbarians come to finish things off, the civilized try to hire them to do security. If one must choose, then the... Read more
Some classical educators just now claim they are the answer to what ails us, when they are part of the reason we are sick. World War I is one hundred years ago. At the moment the world is reflecting on what caused that horror, classical education is making a come back. Those of us who are part of that movement should bring back the form of education with care. We would not want to have taken one hundred years to forget... Read more
Williams Jennings Bryan stood in Dayton and battled for the humane. He was no scholar, but his opposition to Darwinism, whatever the merits, came from a fierce hatred of the Darwinian justification for the killing fields of World War I. This misuse of science (or even philosophical Darwinism) kept a certain kind of classically educated leader comfortable with the deaths of millions. The fit would survive having conveniently arranged for back-of-the-lines jobs. Industry and creativity would boom, because the demands of... Read more
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