Casual Conformity

Last updated on: September 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Erynn Masi de Casanova observes in her forthcoming Buttoned Up that since the surfeit of books on white collar conformism in the 1950s, “mainstream social science has largely ignored the world of white-collar work and the identities of the people who perform this work.” And in particular they have ignored the satorial choices of those white collar workers. The findings of her interviews with white-collar men in various American cities are somewhat surprising. Standards of dress have relaxed in the culture... Read more

Perfecting Grace

Last updated on: September 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his recently-released Paul & the Gift, John Barclay argues that the concept of “grace” is multi-faceted and “susceptible to ‘perfection’ (conceptual extension) in a number of different ways” (6). He takes the notion of “perfection” from Kenneth Burke, who describes it as the inclination to “draw out” a concept to “logical conclusion” and “ultimate reduction,” so as to isolate the concept in its pure form (Barclay, 67-68). Barclay is working out the Pauline notion of grace under the rubric of... Read more

Schism and Christianization

Last updated on: September 11, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

It would seem that a major schism would so weaken the church that it would be ill-suited to major expansion and growth. So it might seem. In his contribution to Sacred Schisms, however, Joseph Bryant argues that the third-century schism between the Catholic and Katharoi factions actually facilitated the church’s capacity to absorb the empire. This preview of the Donatist controversy centered on the church’s treatment of the many lapsed Christians who had adopted various strategies to sidestep Roman authorities during... Read more

Eyes on the Land

Last updated on: September 11, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The land of promise is not a land like Egypt, and when Moses describes the differences between them he focuses on hydraulics. Egypt draws its water from below, pumped with a foot pump from the Nile. Canaan, though, lives off heavenly rain, the waters above, water that comes from Yahweh (Deuteronomy 11:8-12). Water is the source of all blessing and life, and the source of water indicates the source of that life. Moses’ description of the land is as sumptuous... Read more

Hear, O Israel

Last updated on: September 11, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Deuteronomy 6 is the closest thing the Old Testament has to a confession of faith: “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh your God, Yahweh is one” (v. 4). That isn’t merely a “doctrinal” confession. The text immediately goes on to exhort those who confess the one God to love that one God with all their hearts and to demonstrate that love in obedience to His commandments. But the “Shema” is not merely a confession of God’s uniqueness or unity. In fact, Deuteronomy... Read more

Sacrifice and Solidarity

Last updated on: September 11, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Wars are supposed to be moments to renew national solidarity, but Agnieszka Monnet argues that “all wars since WWII have been failures, as far as regenerating a collective sense of purpose and national cohesion is concerned: so-called successful ones, such as the Panama Invasion and Persian Gulf, as ineffective in this respect as the failures (e.g. Vietnam) and stalemates (e.g. Korea).” Why do some wars lend themselves to national renewal more than others? Citing Margin and Ingle’s Blood Sacrifice and Nation, Monnet suggests... Read more

Differentiation and De-Differentiation

Last updated on: September 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In their editorial introduction to Globalizing the Sacred, Manual Vasquez and Marie Marquardt explain the limitations of secularization theory. Some secularization theorists, recognizing that the theory’s universal claims have proven false, put forward a qualified secularization theory. Though secularization as such doesn’t explain the progress of modernity, modernity does differentiate spheres, which has effects similar to those of secularization. When social spheres are differentiated from one another, and from the religion outlook that provided the overall frame of reference in “traditional”... Read more

Fear

Last updated on: September 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Marilynne Robinson has some sobering things to say about Christianity, America, and fear. She starts from the premise, by no means universally accepted in the world of the New York Review of Books, that “America is a Christian country.” From this she formulates a two-part thesis: “first, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind. As children we learn to say, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I... Read more

Where 1968 Started

Last updated on: September 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When Franco Basaglia took over the Gorizia asylum in 1961, it reminded him of his time in a fascist prison back in 1944. The stench of death and shit was overwhelming, and it made Basaglia physically ill. According to John Foot’s The Man Who Closed the Asylums, it was in Gorizia that the spirit of 1968 first took institutional form. Basaglia was reading Foucault and Erving Goffman’s work on Asylums, imbibing the critique of “total institutions” and forming a plan to reinvent... Read more

King Moses

Last updated on: September 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Moses is typically depicted in modern scholarship as a prophet. There is reason for that, but in his monograph on Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses, Danny Mathews argues that the Pentateuch surrounds Moses with various royal symbolisms as well. He points to Deuteronomy 33:4-5, “Moses charged us with the Torah. . . . Thus he became king in Jeshurun,” and argues that the natural antecedent of “he became king” is Moses. From that starting point, he examines eight... Read more