{"id":2520,"date":"2010-04-21T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/"},"modified":"2010-04-21T15:00:37","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T15:00:37","slug":"pope-urban-novak-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Urban Novak II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Michael Novak<\/a>, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, argues for a willingness to declare pre-emptive war on Iran in order to protect \"the Christian Holy Places\" in Israel and the West Bank.<\/p>\n

He seems oblivious to the fact that he is employing the language and the argument of the Crusades.<\/p>\n

\n

What if the mad leader of Iran fulfilled his pledge to wipe Israel from the map with the Iranian nuclear weapon, coming soon? What would we Christians do without the Mount of the Sermon? Without Capernaum? Without Nazareth? Without Cana? Without the lovely and mystical city of Jerusalem \u2014 without Golgotha, and the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane and the tomb? Without Bethlehem? Without the Sea of Tiberius (the Sea of Galilee), where Jesus after his Resurrection had Peter and the others cast their net on the other side of their boat?<\/p>\n

Back in the 1940\u2019s \u2026 Reinhold Niebuhr \u2026 called for a new tough-minded Christian realism. \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Some things cannot be attempted without sounding very, very silly \u2014 without sounding like you don't understand at all what you're talking about.<\/p>\n

One such colossal mistake would be to invoke the Sermon on the Mount in the midst of a call for a new Crusade to defend \"the Christian Holy Places\" in the Levant.<\/p>\n

Another would be to appeal to Reinhold Niebuhr's realism as though it provided an endorsement for unrestrained, immodest, sectarian militarism.<\/p>\n

Michael Novak tries to do both of these things. He has written a very, very silly post.<\/p>\n

(Note to Novak: If you're looking for an elementary introduction to Niebuhrian realism, I'd recommend starting with this speech<\/a>. If you're not<\/em> looking for an elementary introduction to Niebuhrian realism, well, geez, you really should<\/em> be lest you wind up writing more like what you've just written.)<\/p>\n

Novak actually has given me a bit more optimism than I'd previously had about the prospects of a nuclear Iran. He inadvertently reminds me that Jerusalem is a holy city for the radical fundamentalist clerics of Iran no less than for the radical neoconservative clerics of First Things.<\/em> Bombing al-Masjid al-Aqsa is not part of the agenda of militant Islamists. (It is<\/em> part of the agenda of religious madmen subscribing to premillennial dispensationalist \"prophecy\" nightmares, but those madmen are American Christianists, not Iranian Islamists.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Novak, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, argues for a willingness to declare pre-emptive war on Iran in order to protect “the Christian Holy Places” in Israel and the West Bank. He seems oblivious to the fact that he is employing the language and the argument of the Crusades. What if the mad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPope Urban Novak II<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michael Novak, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, argues for a willingness to declare pre-emptive war on Iran in order to protect "the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Urban Novak II\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michael Novak, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, argues for a willingness to declare pre-emptive war on Iran in order to protect "the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-21T15:00:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/\",\"name\":\"Pope Urban Novak II\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-04-21T15:00:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-04-21T15:00:37+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\"},\"description\":\"Michael Novak, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, argues for a willingness to declare pre-emptive war on Iran in order to protect "the\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2010\/04\/21\/pope-urban-novak-ii\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Pope Urban Novak II\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}