• Adam Renberg is marking the 1700-year anniversary of the Council of Nicea with a discussion of how this defining moment in the history of Christianity involved both “Political Power [and] Theological Accuracy.” Renberg’s title uses the word “or” there, not “and,” but his argument is that the negotiations and products of Nicea involved both, not in opposition, but in tension.
This is the first post in a series that I’m looking forward to reading more of. Parts of it set off my Baptist Alarm bells, such as this bit:
Constantine was present.
This presence was not a silent nor an inconspicuous one. Not only was he the patron of the whole event, providing transportation (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.6), meals (3.9), and the location for the sessions in the palace (3.10), but he also processed into the council “like some heavenly angel of God … shining with the fiery radiance of a purple robe, and decorated with the dazzling brilliance of gold and precious stones” (3.10). The power of this act would have not been lost on the bishops who all stood when he walked in—Constantine entered in the performative style of a late Roman court to “insure that his own priorities of unity and harmony were not ignored” (Drake, “Constantine at the Council,” 125). Throughout the sessions, he spoke frequently and guided the debate with his approving and mild comments, perhaps even supplying the famous term ‘homoousios’ (if Eusebius is to be believed).
As a general rule, if you’re trying to suss out “orthodox” Christian theology, don’t ever try to do it on the emperor’s tab. And certainly never with the emperor in the damn room.
And if anybody else shows up “with the fiery radiance of a purple robe, and decorated with the dazzling brilliance of gold and precious stones,” you better kick them out too. I mean, jeebus, this bit isn’t ambiguous or negotiable:
Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
• Open Culture reminds us of Flannery O’Connor’s assessment of Ayn Rand, which is always worth repeating:
I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.
In a similar vein, it was probably not Dorothy Parker who originally said that Rand’s Atlas Shrugged “Is not a book to be lightly tossed aside. It should be thrown with great force.”
And while we’re at it, let’s also remember screenwriter John Roger’s classic contribution to the subject:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
• This is just fun: “The ‘Did Duke Win?’ Guy Didn’t Mean to Dunk on Duke.”
• The title for this post comes from Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town,” which now plays regularly on the music streaming service at the Big Box on its new Classic R&B And Also Lots Of Thin Lizzy channel. And that’s really what it is.
I like this channel, which includes a ton of music that we haven’t previously heard endlessly played throughout our shifts at the store. It spans decades of R&B, including everything from Sister Rosetta (!) to the Sugar Hill Gang. It will segue from Motown classics to New Jack Swing.
And it also includes, strangely, a lot of Thin Lizzy. This can be jarring. I’m standing there packing out freight and vibing to all this great old R&B when suddenly just after the Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly” the speakers start playing “Jailbreak.” It’s like somebody went into the back and switched over to the “classic rock” channel. But then it’s right back to more classic R&B.
Then an hour or so later, it happens again. Anita Baker gives way to Thin Lizzy’s “Cowboy Song” which is followed by Sade. That’s just confusing.
One guess is that this odd Thin Lizzy glitch is the result of a database and an algorithm and an Irishman named Phil Lynott. Lynott was “the co-founder, lead vocalist, bassist, and primary songwriter for the hard rock band Thin Lizzy.” He was also Black (his father was from British Guiana). So maybe the music service’s playlist for the classic R&B channel is set up to pull songs from its database that are listed as being by Black artists and thus the classic R&B channel becomes the Classic R&B And Also Lots Of Thin Lizzy channel.
But it’s also possible this is a deliberate, somewhat mischievous choice being made by a person curating this channel’s playlist, which sometimes sounds like the syllabus for a class on the history of R&B that aims to explore the construction of that category. That’s what some of the older music it includes seems intended to do — the Little Richard and Fats Domino and other early rock and roll that highlights the way our categories and genres of American popular music have always been shaped by and shaped in tension with the paramount American categories of Black and white. It may be that the creation of this Classic R&B And Also Lots Of Thin Lizzy channel is meant to be a little bit jarring, intending to raise some worthy questions about that history and about how musical genres have always, in part, been defined by the race of the artists.
In other words, the Classic R&B channel may be including “Cowboy Song” as a way of continuing the recent conversation sparked by this cowboy song.
In any case, “The Boys Are Back in Town” is still a good song, even if it sticks out strangely when sandwiched in between “Giving You the Best That I Got” and “Smooth Operator.” Guess who just got back today?
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