{"id":1205,"date":"2010-07-12T15:03:19","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T15:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joeljmiller.com\/?p=1205"},"modified":"2012-12-31T18:30:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T00:30:21","slug":"forgetting-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joeljmiller\/2010\/07\/forgetting-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgetting ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"History\"<\/a>
Mosaic 'History' by Frederick Dielman (Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

To know who you are, you have to know from where you came. As philosopher Richard Weaver put it<\/a>, \u201cthere is no identity without historicity.\u201d The bad news is that Americans\u2014and Westerners in general\u2014are increasingly befogged and amnesic about our past. We are losing our history, particularly touch points to our shared Christian past. <\/p>\n

This loss is particularly noticeable in our public life. In a recent piece<\/a> for the Detroit News<\/em> Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute<\/a> points to several unfortunate signs of this. One is the European Union\u2019s refusal to mention God and church in its constitution, regardless of the fact that Europe would be utterly unrecognizable today without every previous generations\u2019 belief in both. <\/p>\n

Another is our current presidential administration\u2019s use of \u201cfreedom of worship\u201d rather than \u201cfreedom of religion.\u201d Sirico admits that this last change is subtle but says the import is significant. \u201cIt is freedom of religion, not merely worship that has been venerated since the American founding,\u201d he says. Keeping \u201conly one dimension of religion (worship) . . . set[s] the stage to curtail its public witness.\u201d <\/p>\n

In both cases a denial or depreciation of the past leads to a present denigration of the faith.<\/p>\n

So back to Richard Weaver. In his landmark book, Ideas Have Consequences<\/a><\/em>, he says that because humans \u201care creatures of reflection, we have only the past. The present is a line, without width; the future only a screen in our minds on which we project combinations of memory.\u201d <\/p>\n

Realizing this, the past takes on serious substance. It is the stuff of which our present and future is composed. But as Weaver says, we want to act without the hassle of \u201cread[ing] the minutes of the last meeting.\u201d Rather than taking the past into account, we endeavor to \u201ccreate a new world out of good will and ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n

We will fail at the job. Forget shibboleths like whether America was founded as a Christian nation, which regardless of its veracity is often a source of more heat than light. Focus instead on the West\u2019s debt to Christianity for developments in science, political liberty, literature, music, tolerance, financial institutions, our legal systems, and technology. <\/p>\n

You can contest or protest Christianity\u2019s role in these developments, but they are facts of our shared history. They\u2019re in the minutes of the last meeting. Rodney Stark\u2019s The Victory of Reason<\/a><\/em> provides an easy entry to this rich past, but regardless of how we access it, if we do not then a tremendous heritage will be squandered. <\/p>\n

Part of this loss will be institutional. Says Sirico, tying back to Weaver\u2019s comment about identity, it \u201cwould be an inestimable loss to the sense of who we are as a people and to any real hope we might have of building a just and tolerant future.\u201d <\/p>\n

And it will also be personal. History is, after all, the story of people. Speaking of developments in art and economics and technology is useful if we also remember the developers. People make history. If we cut ourselves off from our past, we are cutting ourselves off from other people. A true sense of Christian community requires that we realize our debt to the believers who have gone before us. They are crucial in many ways to our salvation and growth in the faith. <\/p>\n

To knit together a full picture of ourselves, a true identity, we have to incorporate our past. That is true for both our culture and ourselves. And that means we also must get wise about protecting and proclaiming it for our culture and ourselves.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To know who you are, you have to know from where you came. As philosopher Richard Weaver put it, \u201cthere is no identity without historicity.\u201d The bad news is that Americans\u2014and Westerners in general\u2014are increasingly befogged and amnesic about our past. We are losing our history, particularly touch points to our shared Christian past. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[581,588,590],"class_list":["post-1205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","tag-richard-weaver","tag-robert-sirico","tag-rodney-stark"],"yoast_head":"\nForgetting ourselves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"To know who you are, you have to know from where you came. 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