The World Does Need More Cowboys

Last updated on: July 30, 2018 at 4:49 pm By Gene Veith

The University of Wyoming has put out an advertising initiative with the slogan “The World Needs More Cowboys.” This has sparked outrage on the grounds that the figure of the cowboy is racist and sexist, an emblem of white privilege and toxic masculinity.

This, even though the university ads will show pictures accompanying the slogan of University of Wyoming students–whose mascot is “Cowboy” and “Cowgirl”–in non-traditional roles. “Every time that slogan is used in any of our materials, there will be an accompanying image or images that are not the traditional idea of a cowboy,” said a university spokesman. “That’s why this campaign works — it’s the dissonance [emphasis mine] between the term ‘cowboy’ and the image that draws attention.” So these “cowboys” will be suitably diverse individuals working in labs, creating works of art, and, in the words of an article on the controversy, “basically engaging in every vocation under the sun except moving cattle on horseback.”

That article was written for The Federalist by my former colleague and fellow Patrick Henry College literature professor Cory Grewell. He shows, first of all, just how ignorant the critics of the cowboy slogan are. And that it is precisely the traditional figure of the cowboy that should commend itself to those who purport to care about social justice.

From Cory Grewell, If You Think Cowboys Are a Symbol of Racism and Sexim, You Are Ignorant:

The faculty’s charge that cowboys lack diversity is particularly ironic because, in the pantheon of Western culture’s heroes, the cowboy is probably the least exclusive of them all. This is particularly so along the lines of race, class, and sex that identity politics prizes so much.

The cowboy, is, for instance, just about the only lower-class hero in Western mythos. Cowboys don’t come from the aristocracy. Stereotypically, they want nothing to do with money, unless it can be won at a poker table.

Virtually every other Western mythic hero has come from the upper classes. Knights in shining armor in the Middle Ages were always aristocrats, or related thereto. Greek and Roman heroes were kings and patricians. Not so the cowboy. The cowboy is by definition salt of the earth.

The idea that the cowboy is sexist, seemingly UW professor Christine Porter’s biggest objection to the new slogan, is equally unfounded. Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane are turning in their graves at this suggestion that somehow the legendary figure of the cowboy excludes women. To speak of cowgirls in the here and now, you’d be hard-pressed to find a girl raised on a ranch in the American West who doesn’t play an integral role in working her family’s cattle.

Nor, finally, is the cowboy of American legend inherently racist, as is evidenced by, among other things, the inventor of modern steer wrestling, Bill Pickett’s, role in developing the rodeo. Although a fictional character, the figure of Deets from Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” is also notably not out of place as a legendary cowboy in the fabric of the novel that gives him birth.

A little research would also reveal that the American cowboy is arguably derived almost entirely from its predecessor, the Mexican vaquero. According to Merriam-Webster, the term “buckaroo” is most likely derived from the Spanish vaquero. Thus, the construct of the “stereotypical cowboy” that the UW faculty so strenuously objects to as racist and sexist is not so much the cowboy as it exists in the American imagination as it is the lazy product of their own cultural ignorance.

[Keep reading. . .]

Cory goes on to unpack what the cowboy figure–one of the foundational heroes of American culture–means.”The cowboy embodies the virtues of toughness, self-sufficiency, and courage. He embodies pride and self-sacrifice. Above all, perhaps, the legendary cowboy embodies grit.” And these are qualities that are greatly needed in America, particularly American universities, today.

Which raises another issue: Have you noticed that cowboys and the “western genre” have pretty much disappeared from today’s popular culture? With the exception of dark, ironic depictions designed to undermine what westerns used to stand for? What does it mean when a culture is reduced to mocking and erasing its heroes?

Photo: Nebraska Cowboys by Solomon D. Butcher (Nebraska State Historical Society) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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What Does It Mean to be “Conservative”?

Last updated on: July 28, 2018 at 1:08 pm By Gene Veith

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Sir Roger Scruton is a British philosopher who has written perceptively on a wide range of topics. (See, for example, his short book on beauty.) I heard him speak at Patrick Henry College. In all of the subjects that he has treated, Scruton shows himself to be a conservative. He has a new book that explains what that means: Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition.

One of Scruton’s great qualities as a philosopher is that, unlike most of those in his vocation, he is concise!

Madeleine Kearns interviews him for National Review. Here are some snippets:

MK: In [William F. Buckley Jr.’s book, God and Man at Yale (1951)], which arguably launched the conservative movement in America, a 24-year-old Buckley wrote: “I believe that if and when the menace of Communism is gone, other vital battles, at present subordinated, will emerge to the foreground. And the winner must have help from the classroom.” Do you think Buckley was correct? If so, what are these “other vital battles”?

Sir Roger Scruton: Yes, Buckley was right. There is the vital battle to defend fundamental institutions, such as marriage and the family, and to counter the censorship of all opinions that express an attachment to our cultural and political inheritance. . . .

MK: What are the main differences between classical liberalism and conservatism?

SRS: Conservatives believe in unchosen obligations (pieties), whereas classical liberals think that the only source of obligation is choice.

MK: And yet they are, you observe, on the same side in today’s culture war. Why is that?

SRS: Because there are so many people who wish to control us, and in doing so to wipe away the image of the past. . . .

MK: What is the difference between a reactionary and a conservative?

SRS: A reactionary is fixed on the past and wanting to return to it; a conservative wishes to adapt what is best in the past to the changing circumstances of the present. . . .

MK: Why do many on the left consider conservatism to be inherently evil (rather than cuddly)?

SRS: The principal reason is that people on the left have illusions about human nature and think they prove their virtue by broadcasting those illusions. Anyone who punctures those illusions is therefore not just a spoilsport but a threat. What the self-declared “virtue” of the left amounts to can be witnessed in what happens to ordinary humanity when the left takes power. . . .

MK: Can one be a hopeful conservative without God?

SRS: Yes, but it helps to believe in God, since then one’s hopes are fixed on a higher reality, and that stops one from imposing them on the world in which we live. . . .

MK: You mention a reluctance on the part of some conservatives to self-identify as such. Surprisingly, perhaps, you include George Orwell and Simone Weil in this category. Can you explain why they, too, belong to the “great tradition”? How can you spot a conservative?

SRS: I try to explain this in my book. Conservatives reveal themselves through their care for ordinary human things, and their recognition of the fragility of decency and the need to protect it.

[Keep reading. . .]

Lots to consider here, including Buckley’s point that whoever wins the battles to come “must have help from the classroom.” Notice what sides most classrooms today–whether from elementary schools to Yale–are helping. Though there are now alternative classrooms–in homes, classical Christian schools, and seriously Christian colleges–that are helping the other sides.

Other points to contemplate: Conservatives believe in “unchosen obligations (pieties),” as opposed to “classical liberals” whom we might term “libertarians” who think that “the only source of obligation is choice.” And yet those two kinds of “conservatives” are often allied today.

Note Scruton’s emphasis on “attachment to our cultural and political inheritance,” his desire to “to adapt what is best in the past to the changing circumstances of the present,” and his opposition to those on the left who would “wipe away the image of the past.”

I was most struck by his answer to the question about “hot to spot a conservative.” “Conservatives reveal themselves through their care for ordinary human things.” By this standard, despite his innovative economic theories and calls for social reform, G. K. Chesterton has a conservative sensibility. I think radicals can also “care for ordinary human things.” I think of Walt Whitman. But Whitman perhaps lacked the other half of Scruton’s description of conservatives: “their recognition of the fragility of decency and the need to protect it.”

Photo: Sir Roger Scruton by Pete Helme (http://www.rogerscruton.com) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Saint G. K. Chesterton?

Last updated on: July 25, 2018 at 10:54 am By Gene Veith

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G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a truly great Christian author. He was a Christian apologist who wrote with humor, energy, and an infectious joy, as well as startlingly illuminating insights. In a style filled with exuberant paradoxes, Chesterton showed that Christianity is no dull, dreary, life-suppressing institution–as it is often portrayed and as it is often presented even by some of its adherents–but that it is the most stimulating of worldviews, inspiring excitement and wonder at all of life.

Chesterton was also masterful as an intellectual and cultural critic, skewering the “heresies” of his time with a devastating combination of logic and wit. I also appreciate Chesterton for evoking the glorious wonders of ordinary life–the mundane tasks and pleasures that are so common that we take them for granted–and the mystery of simply existing. Reading Chesterton never fails to cheer me up.

Chesterton helped turn lots of folks to Christianity. That includes C. S. Lewis, who learned much about apologetics and effective writing from the master.

So, yes, I am a Chesterton fan. But I’m not sure that I want him to be declared a saint.

There is an effort underway to have Chesterton canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Chesterton converted to Catholicism in 1922, after most of his apologetic works had been published.

Read this account of the process and where things stand in the National Catholic Register. Right now, the church is trying to decide whether to take the very first steps.

There are reportedly two major obstacles at this point. The first is that Chesterton does not have a “cult”; that is, a group of Catholics who venerate him and who pray to him. Apparently, such grass-roots devotion is the norm–though not strictly required–for those who eventually are elevated to sainthood. I would say that Chesterton certainly has his cult–go to any meeting of the far-flung Chesterton Society, though I don’t believe that meetings begin with a formal invocation of the great man.

More seriously is that Chesterton in his voluminous writings had some negative things to say about Jews. Specifically, he said that Jews could not be fully English. (The same had been said about Catholics.) He was not hateful and did not encourage harming the Jews, unlike many of his contemporaries. Chesterton was known for his robust kindness to everybody. But since the Catholic church today wants to avoid any appearance of anti-semitism, this may be a deal breaker.

A saint is someone who is Heaven. Catholics must go through a rigorous investigation to determine whether a specific Christian has completed his or her term in Purgatory, which may take hundreds or even thousands of years. Evidence that the Christian now inhabits Heaven includes the performing of miracles as a response to prayers, thus proving that the candidate is in a place where he or she can intercede for the living before God.

As a Reformation Christian, I believe that when Christians die, they go directly to Heaven. So I have no problem considering Chesterton to be a saint. Also a sinner, but a sinner who has been cleansed by the blood of Christ.

But I have problems with Chesterton being turned into a saint in the Catholic sense. In his magisterial work of apologetics, Orthodoxy, he says that he is simply defending the points of the Apostle’s Creed. That is to say, Chesterton made the case for what C. S. Lewis called “mere Christianity.”

Chesterton certainly wrote about and defended Catholicism, writing books about St. Francis and Thomas Aquinas and writing some of the basic texts of the economic and social philosophy of “Distributivism,” which would become an important strain of Catholic social teaching.

But making him a Catholic saint would create the impression that he is “just” Catholic.

Chesterton was married with children, and he had robust appetites when it came to food and drink and the pleasures of life. His earthiness would make him quite a different sort of saint from the ethereal ascetics who make up most of the Catholic saints’ calendar. That alone might be a good reason to have a St. Chesterton.

But I think he himself would consider his candidacy for sainthood to be hilarious. That, to me, would demonstrate his sanctity, though in a sense that doesn’t need the inquisitions of Rome.

Photo: Chesterton Holding Book and Pen by Hector Murchison [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Confession and Absolution

Last updated on: July 24, 2018 at 12:18 pm By Gene Veith

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The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has just issued a major study of the doctrine and practice of confession and absolution. The report by the Commission on Theology and Church Relations establishes the Biblical and theological basis for confessing your sins to a pastor and receiving forgiveness from his words of absolution.

This may sound strange to you Protestants who are not Lutherans. What do you do with John 20:21-22? “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’”

Lutherans are like Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans in retaining confession and absolution. While the Lutheran practice looks like what Catholics do, like other seeming similarities, it is quite different. Confessing your sins to a pastor is strictly voluntary, not necessary for forgiveness as it is for Rome, and it is not necessary to enumerate every sin specifically before it can be forgiven. And Lutheran pastors require no “satisfaction”–that is, works to atone for your sin–as required by the Catholic rite of penance. The forgiveness applied by Lutheran pastors is simply the good news of the Gospel, that Jesus has atoned for your sins on the Cross, giving you forgiveness in His name.

Most Lutherans do their confession and receive their absolution corporately, at the beginning of the Divine Service. After a time of reflection on our sins and a corporate prayer in which we admit that we deserve God’s “temporal and eternal punishment,” we hear these words from the pastor:

Upon this your confession, I, by virtue of my office, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God unto all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

But only Christ can forgive sins! Right. And He does so by means of vocation. That is to say, “calling.” Just as God gives daily bread by means of the farmer and creates new life by means of parents, Christ gives His Word of forgiveness by means of pastors. According to the Lutheran doctrine of vocation, God is present in and works through ordinary human beings whom He has called into various realms of service to their neighbors. This “calling” is at the heart of what pastors do. (“As a called and ordained servant of the Word. . . .and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ. . . .”)

This happens every Sunday, but private confession and absolution has fallen into disuse. It is, however, a powerful weapon in the arsenal of pastoral care, allowing pastors to cut deeply into the heart of a sinner, eliciting repentance and a sense of great personal comfort from the Gospel. Currently, there are efforts to bring back the practice of individual confession and absolution.

Here are some excerpts from the CTCR document, Confession and Absolution. To download the entire report, go here.

The two words “confession and absolution” are worthy of some clarification. “Confession” occurs in more than one setting or context. The root word from the New Testament is ὁμoς, [homos] “one and the same.” The basic meaning of the related Greek compound noun ὁμoλoγἰα is “an agreement” by which two parties say the same thing, and the compound verb ὁμoλoγέω is similarly used as “to agree.” Thus, “if we confess our sins” (1 John 1:9), we are saying the same thing that God is saying about our sin. We are agreeing with what God reveals about us and our sin. We are admitting (acknowledging) that the Lord’s judgment upon our sin is right and true.2 The second word, “absolution,” is a synonym for forgiveness. Lutheran theology dictates that in any discussion of “confession and absolution,” it is this second word that requires emphasis. . . .

Luther speaks of confession of sins in three settings: 1) private confession to a pastor; 2) confession to God alone (as we find it in the Lord’s Prayer, Matt. 6:12); and 3) confession made to a fellow Christian (James 5:16). . . .

First, no one should assume that a different kind or quality of forgiveness from Christ our Lord is given in the context of individual confession. All of the Means of Grace — Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, preaching — convey the same forgiving Gospel. In this respect, there is no difference between private confession and absolution and that which is conducted on Sunday mornings in public worship. One Lutheran theologian put it succinctly: “Private absolution is neither more nor less than the absolution the whole congregation receives in the gospel. Rather, it is nothing other than the gospel the whole congregation receives, specifically applied to the circumstances of the individual sinner.”

It is our goal to explain why, even though the same Gospel is given through the various Means of Grace, private confession and absolution may be a considerable aid to all Christians, and especially useful to pastors, who share in the burdens of their people and who are susceptible to unique temptation and discouragement. It is first of all necessary, however, to clearly establish the biblical foundation for confession and absolution. . . .

Along with these developments came the threefold understanding of “penance” in the Roman tradition. Penance had three parts: confession, absolution, satisfaction (or four parts if contrition is included before confession). The absolution pronounced in the indicative was still conditioned on the works of satisfaction outlined by the priest — your sins are forgiven, but you must still do the works demanded of you to avoid penalties in purgatory. This served as the launching pad for confession and absolution to be viewed as something related to making amends. In the period leading up to the Reformation, Rome officially formulated its position at the Council of Florence in 1439 that established what poenitentia (penance) consisted of: contritio (contrition/ sorrow over sin), confessio (confession necessarily made to a priest) and satisfactio (the satisfaction or works of penance adjudicated by the priest).

Luther believed this was a fundamental misunderstanding of the gift of absolution and strove to bring it back to its biblical foundations. For Luther and the other confessors, the keys convey the Gospel (in the broad sense as both Law and Gospel), by condemning, in God’s name, self-assured people of their sin and by assuring the contrite of their forgiveness. The binding key, however, is for Luther only a means to an end. The ultimate aim of the keys is the forgiveness of sins. . . .

The preceding material indicates that the authentically Lutheran view of individual confession and absolution is largely unique, occupying a middle ground between Rome and evangelical Protestantism.44 Unlike most Evangelicals or other Protestants, Lutherans do not repudiate private confession before a minister and steadfastly uphold the propriety and efficacy of the pastor’s absolution in the name of Christ.45 Unlike Rome, however, Lutheran teaching and practice makes private confession entirely voluntary, rejects the notion that one must (or even can) enumerate all one’s sins before a confessor, and rejects the addition of satisfaction as confession’s third element. Lutheran teaching upholds the absolution above all else and affirms its great comfort for the individual penitent.

Illustration: A woodcut to Article XI of the Augsburg Confession by Wenceslas Hollar (1607-1677) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Towards the Restoration of Journalism

Last updated on: July 13, 2018 at 12:26 pm By Gene Veith

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When we retired a few years ago, we moved back to Oklahoma, where our roots are, living in a small, rural town like the one I grew up in. Though greatly in decline, the town has a bi-weekly newspaper. I found one columnist particularly useful in orienting me to local issues and state politics.

This Jordan Green–who also writes features and newstories–writes with clarity, liveliness, and insight. A real pro, I thought. And yet he is free of the progressive bias that seems to dominate his profession. At the same time, he can be critical of the state legislature, which is dominated by self-described conservatives who somehow can almost never get anything done, conservative or otherwise. I was proud that our little town had a journalist of Mr. Green’s stature.

And then I met him. He showed up at the Fourth of July post-parade picnic, which we hosted at our church. I had seen his picture in the paper that showed him wearing a fedora like reporters wore in movies from the 1950’s. He looked young, but then again at my age almost everyone looks young. So, recognizing his hat, I went up to him and told him how much I appreciated his columns.

I soon learned that he hadn’t graduated from college yet. In fact, he hadn’t graduated from high school yet! This fall he will be a high school senior!

He has been an intern for the newspaper, getting experience, he said, that he hoped would be helpful when he starts a career in journalism someday.

I certainly hope that comes to pass. It looks like a true vocation to me. And he strikes me as the kind of new journalist who could help to restore what has become a dysfunctional and little-trusted profession.

Here is a sample of his writing from a recent column, one which, as it happens, is about the trivialization of journalism. From Jordan Green, Reporting on Tweets and Twitter Makes a Terrible Tale:

In the era of the Trump Tweet, news reporting has devolved into a mere aggregator of social media posts.

A few weeks ago, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, was kicked out of a restaurant in Virginia. The reason? The restaurant hates Republicans and anyone loosely affiliated with Trump. It’s what we call a cognitive bias, something we should all try to fight.

Once Huckabee was kicked out, social media erupted with posts both for and against the actions of the restaurant. Facebook users, which are not always known for their wise sayings and intelligent insight, prated on endlessly about what they thought about the move. But, as usual, Twitter took the limelight.

All the celebrities were opining on the matter, because, you know, they just HAD to. And, to the surprise of literally no one, President Trump later took to Twitter to talk about it.

Now, I’m not going to tell you what he said in the tweet because I don’t believe reporting on tweets and social media posts is journalism. And that’s exactly what I’m here to talk about today: The media needs to stop the pointless practice of writing stories based on tweets, of all things. . . .

Right now, across the globe, nations are committing unspeakable horrors against their own people.

In China, the communist government bars certain religions, limits what its people can say and do, and executes them for political purposes.

In South Africa, a bloody and vicious civil war rages on. Apartheid, the practice of segregation, has been resurrected – but it has been reversed. White South African farmers are being killed and having their land robbed of them, and the government bars them from leaving the country to escape torture.

Those are harming and killing millions of people. But the mainstream media doesn’t cover them very much, if at all. They’re busy writing about tweets.

[Keep reading. . .]

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The American Dream

Last updated on: July 4, 2018 at 5:06 pm By Gene Veith

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For the 4th of July, the lead editorial of the conservative newspaper the Daily Oklahoman printed excerpts from a number of classic Independence Day speeches.

I was struck by this one in particular, from Martin Luther King, Jr., no less, which says that “the American Dream” is not about owning your own home; rather, it is about something much more profound:

Martin Luther King Jr. — “The American Dream,” delivered July 4, 1965 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta

“Then that dream goes on to say another thing that ultimately distinguishes our nation and our form of government from any totalitarian system in the world. It says that each of us has certain basic rights that are neither derived from or conferred by the state. In order to discover where they came from, it is necessary to move back behind the dim mist of eternity. They are God-given, gifts from His hands. Never before in the history of the world has a sociopolitical document expressed in such profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language the dignity and the worth of human personality.”. . .

“You see, the Founding Fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the ‘image of God,’ is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected. Not that they have substantial unity with God, but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: there are no gradations in the image of God.”. . .

“All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, rights that can’t be separated from you. Go down and tell them, (No) ‘You may take my life, but you can’t take my right to life. You may take liberty from me, but you can’t take my right to liberty. You may take from me the desire, you may take from me the propensity to pursue happiness, but you can’t take from me my right to pursue happiness.’ (Yes) ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'”

There was a time when Americans of liberal politics, like Dr. King, talked this way. The editorial also printed others speeches in this vein from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Though today’s liberals purport to revere Dr. King, I wonder if they would tolerate such a speech today, with its invocation of the Bible and its grounding of our liberties in God.

Illustration: John Trumbull, “Declaration of Independence” (1817-1818), via Pixabay, CC0, Creative Commons

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