A Few More Reasons to Appreciate John Lukacs

I have recently finished reading Democracy and Populism:  Fear and Hatred (2005), by one of my favorite writers, John Lukacs.  I believe this is my fifth book by Lukacs, and I could do much worse than to devote myself to reading the remaining twenty-five or so.  He has much to say about democracy and a host of isms:  populism, nationalism, progressivism, capitalism, socialism, patriotism, Darwinism, communism, liberalism and conservatism.  There is much here to offend ideologues across the political spectrum; but Lukacs is pushing ninety now, and long past caring.  A few selections, as follows:

On the Enlightenment, 1789 and misreading of history:

…much of the entire (and so largely French) Enlightenment had become boring.  Or at least irrelevant: because of its mechanical and rationalist philosophy of human nature. But here we come to the mistaken view that many conservatives adopted during the twentieth century and that they have even now.  This is that the rise of nationalist anti-liberalism meant a great historical reaction against 1789….And this is the enduring mistake of many conservatives, who despise the “Left” more than they distance themselves from “extremists” on the “Right.”

Two hundred years after 1789 “Right” and “left” still retain some meaning, but less and less.  And much of the same applies to their once offsprings, conservatives and liberals.  For, if conservatives have a fatal inclination to accept populists and extreme nationalists for their allies on the “Right,” the liberals’ misreading of the latter is as bad, if not worse.

Such a misreading of history…is replete with the –alas, still enduring—myopia of liberals about history, indeed about human nature….people are moved by (and at times even worship) evidences of power, rather than by propositions of social contracts.

Hegel…understood that human history did not move like a pendulum, that actions and reactions of ideas—indeed, historical movements—did not quite follow the laws of physics. That recognition was correct; but his conclusions were not. According to his well-known dialectic, Thesis was succeeded by Antithesis, and then from the eventual struggle and confluence of the two a Synthesis was bound to come. But that scenario was too intellectual, idealistic as well as mechanical….What came after 1870 was the emergence and the powerful attraction of two new enormous movements, nationalism and socialism, that turned out to rule most of the history of the twentieth century—indeed, most of the world even now.  They were not “syntheses”…

On Marx and Marxism:

That was but a consequence of Marx’s greatest failure, which was his profoundly mistaken concept of human nature (a concept not entirely different from that of capitalists, Progressives, liberals, economists, etc.): homo oeconomicus, Economic Man—when it became more and more evident that history was formed, and politics dependent upon, how and what large masses of people were thinking (and desiring, and fearing, and hating). That is: during the increasing intrusion of mind into matter.

We must not kick a man when he is down. Marx was an unattractive man but—at least intellectually—he was taking the side of the downtrodden and the poor, especially of the industrial workers (though not of peasants). Moreover, most of his critics miss the vital points, the inherent weakness of the Marxist body of dogma….we ought to look at Marx historically, not philosophically. Marx and Marxism failed well before 1989—not in 1956 and not in 1919 but in 1914. For it was then that internationalism and class consciousness melted away in the heat of nationalist emotions and beliefs….Marxists would never understand—let alone admit—this. They were (and many still are) thinking in categories of class consciousness instead of national consciousness. Marx…entirely failed to understand what nationalism…was. His heavy, clumsy prose droned and thundered against Capitalism and against the State. Hardly a word about the Nation; and of course, not even the slightest inkling…that State and Nation are not the same things.

This brings us to what is perhaps the fundamental Marxist (and also economic; and often liberal) misreading of human nature….what governs the world (and especially in the democratic age) is not the accumulation of money, or even of goods, but the accumulation of opinions.

On Liberalism’s embrace of Darwinism:

Liberalism, in its noblest and also in its most essential sense, had always meant (and faintly, here and there it still means) an exaltation, a defense of the fundamental value and category of human dignity. Darwinism suggests that there was, there is, and there remains no fundamental difference between human beings and all other living beings. In sum: either human beings are unique or they are not. Either thesis may be credible but not both; and this is not merely a religious question.

It is amazing how unquestioningly and enthusiastically American Protestants embraced Darwinism.  This ought to tell us something about the shallowness of their religious beliefs, together with their belief in the progress of democracy.

On Not Suffering Fools Gladly:

The Rev. Shailer Matthews, dean of the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, a celebrated public theologian (and an imbecile)…

On Patriotism, Nationalism and Populism:

Patriotism is defensive; nationalism is aggressive. Patriotism is the love of a particular land, with its particular traditions; nationalism is the love of something less tangible, of the myth of a “people,” justifying many things, a political and ideological substitute for religion.

…the phenomenon of populism which, unlike old-fashioned patriotism, is inseparable from the myth of a people. Populism is folkish, patriotism is not. One can be a patriot and cosmopolitan (certainly culturally so). But a populist is inevitably a nationalist of sorts. Patriotism is less racist than is populism. A patriot will not exclude a person of another nationality from a community where they have lived side by side and whom he has known for many years; but a populist will always be suspicious of someone who does not seems to belong to his tribe.

On the Misreading of Communism:

In 1917, wrote William F. Buckley… “history changed gears” – whatever that means.  It is nonsense. The Russian revolutions…were the consequences of a great European war, not the other way around….What matter was not ideological but national. What happened in Russia was Russian….Those were years of mud and ice, smeared and streaked with blood.

Yet Lenin (and Trotsky…) were despicable (and not merely deplorable) murderers and rulers, as was Stalin, if not on occasion, worse. Moreover, compared with Stalin they were fools, without an inkling of statesmanship, without much comprehension of human nature, without the slightest understanding of nationalism—all of these matters that Stalin felt, and learned, and then possessed.

Communism and Communists became more than scapegoats; they were, often thoughtlessly and automatically, attributed as the main sources of anything that was evil.

What was common in the beliefs of just about all of them…was their mistaken view of history—more precisely, of the evolving history of the world. Such a view, at least to some extent, has been shared by myriad other people too who were not necessarily Communist sympathizers: a view which, though badly tattered, remains widespread even now. It is a view inseparable from the general idea of progress, of evolution, of democracy, amounting to the progress of mankind…

There was (and is) Tocqueville’s great maxim: that while the prime sin of aristocratic age was that of pride, that of the democratic age is that of envy….And envy is but one, though widespread, democratic manifestation of the hidden existence of hatreds and of fears. One of the manifestations of the latter was American anti-Communism, the popular substitute for patriotism.

“A beacon on the summit of mountains to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light till time shall be lost to eternity, and the globe itself dissolves, nor leave a wreck behind.” There is something strangely unhistorical and profoundly pessimistic in this vision. And disturbing: for the fate of mankind indeed seems catastrophic if Americans do not free themselves from the thought that they are the last hope of earth.

A misreading of the world after 1945. The-well-justified-American concern should have been with Russian power, not with Communist ideology.

On the New Barbarism:

…Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed playing the role of president, or George W. Bush, who enjoyed playing soldier. Here was the duality of the American character: stunning transformations of personal and sexual and civilizational behavior, involving the dissolution of families, including millions of people who identify and see themselves as “conservatives.”

History is not governed by logic: but we must at least consider that this strange duality cannot exist much longer: that sooner or later the very political structure of democracy may undergo a deep-going and at least for a while irreversible transformation, including mutations that may have already begun.

A symbolic and symptomatic example of the confusion of state and nation and people is the cult of the American flag—a cult more sacrosanct than in many other countries.

A new barbarian feudalism is bound to come in the future: but not yet.

One of the fundamental differences between extremes of Right and Left is this: in most instances hatred moves the former; fear the later.

And the endless pursuit of justice that may lead, and indeed often leads, to the worst of human disasters.

Meanwhile, liberalism and social democracy have, almost inevitably, altered Protestantism, with its reminder of sin first diminishing, then evaporating. But…here and there a radical and nationalist populism…has merged with the reappearing remnants of a fundamentalist Protestantism…a kind of near-fanatical spirituality which, however-because of its shallowness and individual permissiveness-is ephemeral. Among the Eastern, Greek and Russian Orthodox churches of eastern Europe the nationalist and populist characters of the different national churches remain largely what they have been for almost one thousand years.

 

On Woodrow Wilson:

Since not only the importance of ideas but the very importance of events must be judged by their consequences, let us recognize that the then-great revolution maker, the effective destroyer of an old order, was Wilson, not Lenin. That Wilson’s character was unattractive, that his personality was pallid and cramped, that his mind was immature, that the very workings of that mind were strange, that even the otherwise trenchant observation of his postmaster general (“a man of high ideals but of no principles”) was inaccurate, since those very ideas were less than mediocre and customarily superficial—all this is but another example of the iron, even more than of the unpredictability, of history.  “National self-determination” and “Make the world safe for democracy” transformed the history of the twentieth century more than anything else….American foreign policy—indeed, America’s view of the world—have remained Wilsonian ever since…

 

 

The Road to Ruin: Choniates and Lukacs

Manuel I Komnenos

Over Thanksgiving, I settled-in for some serious reading.  Two titles stand out.  The first, O City of Byzantium, is a 700-year old history by Niketas Choniates, the other, Last Rites, a slim 2009 work by Hungarian-American historian John Lukacs.  At first glance they appear to be wildly dissimilar, but on some level at least, they both deal with the subject of ruin.

Choniates was an up-and-coming court official in Constantinople, serving under the latter Komnenian emperors.  Making good use of his access to records, he began his narrative in 1118--at the ascension of John II Komnenos--and concluded abruptly about 1206.  Choniates' detailed history serves as the primary source for the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The translation by Harry Magoulias is surprisingly accessible to the modern reader.  Choniates was no court sycophant, nor does he seem to be swept-up with any particular Byzantine faction.  And Choniates is not averse to a bit of salacious sensationalism when it comes to the sexual politics of the day.  Early on, he relates Anna Komnene's retribution against her husband's failure to seize the throne upon her father's death:

It is said that Kaisarissa Anna, disgusted with her husband's frivolous behavior and distraught in her anger, and being a shrew by nature, felt justified in strongly contracting her vagina when Bryennios's penis entered deep inside her, thus causing him great pain.

Well alright then...I may never again think of Anna Komnene in quite the same light.  But there is more of this sort of thing.  For example, the death of Manuel I Komnenos left the Empire in the hands of an empress not yet thirty years of age and her twelve-year old son, the new Emperor Alexios II Komnenos.  In the inevitable scramble for power, a young Komnenos nephew (also named Alexios) seduced his newly-widowed aunt and empress.  In Choniates' droll telling, he sought "to mount both mother and throne."  And in an almost comical telling, the scoundrel Isaakios Komnenos, escaping from prison once again, nevertheless took time to engage in sexual intercourse with his wife--up against the prison wall, no less--"leaving her pregnant with a son" before fleeing his captors.

Alexios I Komnenos is generally credited with saving the Empire in the desperate years following Manzikert in 1071, and indeed the 12th-century witnessed a revival of Byzantium's fortunes.  From Choniates' standpoint, however, it was at best a hollow rebirth.  The rot was set, as they say, and like the proverbial dead fish, it began at the head--the power elites--in this case the Komnenoi themselves.

Of course, had the Byzantine rulers been more saints than sinners, they would have still had to have dealt with aggression from the West.  Choniates savages the Latins, as would be expected.   

Even the serpent, the ancient plotter against the human race, did not conceive and beget such enmity.  But because the land which was our allotted portion to inhabit, and to reap the fruits thereof, was openly likened to paradise by the most accursed Latins, who were filled with passionate longing for our blessings, they were ever ill-disposed towards our race and remain forever workers of evil deeds.  Though they may dissemble friendship, submitting to the needs of the time, they yet despise us as their bitterest enemies; and though their speech is affable and smoother than oil flowing noiselessly, yet are their words darts, and thus they are sharper than a two-edged sword.  Between us and them the greatest gulf of disagreement has been fixed, and we are separated in purpose and diametrically opposed, even though we are closely associated and frequently share the same dwelling.  Overweening in their pretentious display of straightforwardness, the Latins would stare up and down at us and behold with curiosity the gentleness and lowliness of our demeanor; and we, looking grimly upon their superciliousness, boastfulness, and pompousness, with the drivel from their nose held in the air, are committed to this course and grit our teeth, secure in the power of Christ, who gives the faithful the power to tread on serpents and scorpions and grants them protection from all harm and hurt.

Choniates' account of the sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204 is particularly vivid--sparing neither the living nor the dead (for they looted the tombs) and leaving it "a miserable corpse of a city."  He calls the Latin faith a fraud, noting that even the "sons of Ishmael" behaved with much more magnanimity when they retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders.  "By grasping pearls, they rejected Christ, the pearl of great price."

And while Choniates clearly expected little from the Latins, his real scorn is reserved for the ruling Roman elites of Constantinople.  Over the decades, the Empire weakened in many ways.  Control of the seas slipped away from Byzantium.  The triremes were not refurbished and replaced, but allowed to rot in the harbor.  Money lavished on the army contributed to their decline, as well--making military service a vehicle for financial gain rather than defense of the Empire.  Byzantine strongholds fell to cowardice and disloyalty.  The Empire failed to establish a modus vivendi with the West.  The fabled Byzantine bureaucracy broke down under the weight of graft and nepotism,  But according to Choniates, it was the Komenoi themselves--even with the first three strong rulers--that was the poison working its way through the Empire. 

The Emperor Alexios I Komnenos began placing his extended family connections in all positions of power within the vaunted Byzantine bureaucracy.  In short order, the families Komnenos, Doukas, Byrennios, Kontostephanos, Kantakuzene, Angelos, Palaiologus and Branas grasped the levers of power.  "All of the emperor's relatives were avaricious and grasping, and the frequent turnover of officials taught them nothing else but eagerly to steal and loot, to purloin the public taxes, and to amass great wealth."  Canon law prevented close marriage within families (although more than one Byzantine ruler flaunted this restriction), but the web of relationships rivalled that of the Hapsburgs and Bourbons during their heyday.  And with every generation, a new crop of cousins arose who nurtured the belief that it was they, rather than the Emperor, who was destined for the throne.

And so, while the Emperor Manuel I Komnenos "piled up mounds of money as though they were pebbles," his successors did not "hold on to the wealth they amassed but poured it out with both hands on the excessive indulgence of the body and costly ornamentation....like heaps of chaff and blown away like summer dust to fill the slow bellies."  The latter emperors wallowed in debauchery, and grew reluctant to leave the comforts of the palace, with its banquet tables laden with "carved meat."  Choniates quotes Archilochus who said "that what has been amassed at the expense of much time and labor often flows into the belly of the whore."

It was the Komnenos family that was the major cause of the destruction of the empire; because of their ambitions and their rebellions, she suffered the subjugation of provinces and cities and finally fell to her knees.  These Komnenoi...were the utter ruin of their country, and whenever they attempted to seize and hold sway over our public affairs, they were the most inept, unfit, and stupid of men."

To quote Adam Smith (something I do not ever recall doing before), "there is a lot of ruin left in a nation."  Certainly the Komnenian emperors presided over an additional 125 years between the post-Manzikert implosion and the sack of Constantinople in 1204.  As the decades rolled-on, however, one is hard pressed to find much of anything to admire from this Constantinopolitan society.  The reconstituted, chastened and humbled rump empire that held on from 1261 until 1453 was, on the whole, a more admirable civilization.        


John Lukacs

I laid down Choniates and picked up Lukacs, who writes of another ruin, 700 years later.  He has a compelling biography.  Lukacs was born in Hungary in 1924, the son of a Catholic doctor and a Jewish mother who divorced before the Second World War.  I assume that the mother converted to Catholicism (she lies buried in a Catholic cemetery in Chester County, Pennsylvania) for John Lukacs has been a lifelong committed Catholic.  His maternal ethnicity, however, put him in grave danger during the latter years of the war.  He was assigned to Jewish work battalions , but somehow managed to evade transfer to a concentration camp and survive the conflict.  In 1946, seeing the direction of things in his native land, young Lukacs walked west, towards the promise of America.  He taught history for many decades, primarily at a small Catholic college.  He pursued this course primarily in order to be able to write.  Once, at some academic reception, he overheard a colleague remark that he was not really more of a writer than a historian.  Lukacs was not offended.  And write he did.  As the title suggests, this was intended to be his final work.  "Twenty years ago I was still standing dans les faubourgs de la viellesse, ambling in the suburbs of old age.  The ages and walls of that stony city I saw at a distance.  No longer."  Lukacs had more time than he imagined in 2009, perhaps, for I understand he has since published another, his 30th.

Lukacs adapted quickly--though never completely--to his adopted country.  By the mid 1950s he had married Helen, a Philadelphia editor.  They moved into a small, unfinished house on three acres of a farm her family had owned since long before the Revolution.  He resides there still, after the death of his first wife at age 42, his subsequent remarriage to Stephanie, her death, and his final marriage to Pamela.

This work is hard to pigeon-hole, being a wide-ranging rumination about his life, history, and how America intersects each.  One of the perks of old age, I suppose, is the luxury of speaking plainly and boldly without worrying about any repercussions.  (Personally, I am looking forward to that.)  For example, he dismisses Francis Fukayama's The End of History as "idiotic," and Subjectivist Determinism as "nonsense."  Contra Collingwood et al who argue that history is nothing but the history of ideas, Lukacs counters that "no idea exists without the person who thinks it and represents it--people do not have ideas, they choose them." (And here, Lukacs frames the instinctive opposition I have always felt towards Determinism, whether it be in history, ideology or religion.)  And against Lord Action's "purpose of history is the definite, and final, establishment of truths," Lukas answers, decisively, no.  Rather, "the purpose of historical knowledge is the reduction of untruth" (or what Andrew Louth terms a "process of undeception.")  Indeed, the "method of history is description, not definition."

On the subject of history itself, Lukacs posits that it is not a "science."  He reminds us that "history is not just the recorded past, but the remembered past, and like memory, it is incomplete and fallible."  Indeed, "the purpose of human knowledge--indeed, of human life itself--is not accuracy, and not even certainty; it is understanding."

Lukacs writes at length about the end of the Bourgeois Age, long-gone, though not yet fully realized (If one has to have a year to bookend such things, Lukacs suggests 1969 as an outside date.)  He has a fondness for "the European era of five hundred years, that I cherished and to which I belonged," but does not sentimentalize it.  Lukacs finds no contradiction in the fact that "dribs and drabs" of the age persist here and there, for "that is how history proceeds." 

At first glance, conservatives might warm to his writings.  Lukacs, a self-described reactionary, would in no wise categorize himself as such (a traditionalist, yes.)  He is scathing in his critique of modern movement Conservatism, and no doubt would be wryly bemused at those whose cry is "Take Back America."  Lukacs notes that "there are no eternal returns in history."   

Lukacs knows there is no return, but expresses concern about what is taking its place. 

At this time, at the end of a great age when, having liberated mankind from all kinds of fetters, having declared the end of slavery, emancipation of women and of children, entire liberties of speech, of print, of pictures, etc., men's images of men and women are more sordid, more ugly, more desperate than ever?

And, as he notes elsewhere "it could be worse:  but very good it is not."  Lukacs contends that the Bourgeois Age with its hypocrasies, materialism, shallowness, "the mental wasteland of the hollow men," was not entirely wrong.  What was (and is) at fault, however, "is their institutionalization, the acceptance of their formulations as absolutes."  By the late 1960s, thebourgeois convictions--weak and superficial--had collapsed and disappeared, "and the behavior of their offspring changed instantly, together with what and how they thought."

Lukacs loves America, or more exactly, he loves his small corner of West Schuylkill Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania.    Looking farther afield, he sees little promise.

I despair of this country and many of its people.  I think that the 21st century will not be the American century, but that some giant and unprecedented catastrophe may smite this country, probably of its own making, and perpetuated by one or more of their own.--I do not fear an Arab crashing itno the Limerick nuclear towers, but an American in a state of sexual or ideological frenzy.

He also writes of the death of liberalism and the rise of conservatism (in the current parlance.)  Liberalism is "exhausted."  In 1950, no American leader, whether political, intellectual or academic, described themselves as "conservative."  By 1980, however, they were in the majority and proved it by choosing "Ronald Reagan, a divorced movie actor, for their hero, for their president."  Lukacs  describes this as a "tectonic change," though the manners and morals of most Americans "conservatives" differed little from "liberals."

There is one great and grave fault in the thinking of American conservatives as well as of American liberals.  This is their belief in (linear) Progress. The liberals, ever more strained, propaganda for the extension of limitless human "freedoms," their clinging to the Darwinist categories of evolution and "progress," not only compromises but goes counter to their once noble protection and defense of human dignity.  The conservatives' propagation of American power throughout the world and, above it, into space, their thoughtless belief in the endless benefits of technology, amounts to a denial of every conservative view of human nature and of its limits.  Liberals adulate Science; conservatives adulate Technology.  No great difference there.

Lukacs ridicules the extreme notions of American Exceptionalism of a "Chosen People."

...a Chosen People, an exception not only to others but to history itself, that they were living in the greatest and freest and richest country in the world...

...tend to believe not only that they are a Chosen People but also that what is good for America is good for the world:  Yet at the same time they are not much interested in the world outside the United States. 

God will always smite, or chastise, those who think they are his Chosen People.

Agreeing with Tocqueville, Lukas posits that "the character of a people is more important than are their institutions," and "more important than the measure of their material goods is what people think and believe."

Lukacs remains committed to his Church, but he is no Catholic triumphalist.  The fact that his first and second wives, both Protestants, converted to Catholicism during their last illnesses says something about the nature of his faith.  Helen Lukacs remained open to Catholicism the more she was exposed to Catholics during their marriage.  But she was set aback when priests would visit, trying hard to prove themselves "regular fellows, like all other Americans."  Lukacs remembers that she always expected more from American Catholic priests.  Early in 2001, Lukacs went to Mass, specifically to pray for his ailing second wife, Stephanie.  The priest promised to cut his homily short and "spoke of angels and saints in Heaven watching the Superbowl."  Lukacs walked out in disgust.

The Church, my church, must now reconcile itself to be a church of a minority of the truly believing--as it was, of course, in entirely different circumstances and with entirely different prospects after the age of the catacombs eighteen hundred or so years ago.  The Church must remain a single, lonely lighthouse of human comprehension, of wisdom, a proponent of love. 

Lukacs is often at his best in descriptive vignettes of people and places of his experience:

On his mother's Budapest friend:

...Ila knew her own interests very well.  She was sophisticated, intelligent, elegant, demanding, very, very careful with her possessions and money, though not with those of others; acid with her criticism of many people, save for her daughter and granddaughter, two small crystalline vessels wherein she poured just about every drop of her stream of coagulated love.  She lived in that once admired modern but now rundown building of the 1930s in considerable comfort, her apartment filled with good furniture and paintings and lacy things, something that she was able to guard and protect and keep even during much of the Communist regime.

On the character of his first wife, Helen:

H. had something like a historical sense of what the dissolution of her family meant...she evinced no illusions for some idyllic kind of American past lived and experienced by her immediate ancestors.  She understood too much about the fatal limitations of their perspectives, of their characters, of human nature, of the United State of America, of the world.  She was profoundly conservative--in the proper and best sense of that word that began to become corrupted in the 1950s.  She gave up her outside employment, her editorial job, at the very time (the early 1960s) when millions of American women, wives and mothers who had moved to the suburbs, suddenly felt constrained with what life in the suburbs offered to them, and fled their daytime loneliness to their employment in various offices.  Helen thought, and often said, that to be ("to be," rather than "to stay") at home with a family was the best employment that a woman could choose.  She was a traditionalist.  She was a patriot.  And a Democrat, and a liberal.  She was appalled by the Vietnam War, and by Nixon and Kissinger.  She disdained American nationalism and sentimentalism. "The American Dream" was a phrase that she abhorred....Somehow she understood that an entire civilization was unraveling and sinking, that Civilization was more important than Culture.

On the Greenbriar Resort, on a honeymoon trip with third wife, Pamela:

I knew that I did not belong here, not in the least.  I was not an American sportsman but a fortuneless immigrant who had not and could not dare have anything in common with the providers and riflers of this fabulous amount and variety of goods, with these ranks of Sam's and Dick's and Ron's people.  I was a foreigner, alien and uninvited, out of place and out of time as at a Nascar race or the Super Bowl. 

On Pamela's family home in Charleston, West Virginia:

...the bookcases on the wall of their living room or parlor lined with biographies and novels and histories of the America of the 1930s and 1940s, of a decent, honest, still book -reading , middle class.

Lukacs' work is not without hope. 

Ambition and greed invoke, they reach out to a future.  Envy and pleasure insist on the present.  But gratitude:  it comes always from a past.  There is my gratitude to the past, to my past, including those who loved me and whom I loved.  Beneath and above them is my enduring gratitude to God, for both my past and my present.  Will the sincerity of this gratitude suffice to escape His adverse judgment of me:  I do not think so; I only hope.


Both Niketas Choniates and John Lukacs sift among the ashes of history, searching to salvage something of value.  Choniates started his narrative with this admonition:  "Let no one be so mad as to believe that there is anything more pleasurable than history."  He speaks of kindling the fires of memory and ploughing the furrows of the past.  Lukacs would agree, I think, closing with this admonition:

My readers:  please turn toward the past, and dip into its records and remnants, for inspiration.  By doing that you may turn melancholy:  but you will not lose your appetite for life.

Fun with AM Radio, Peter Leithart and the "Protestant Metanarrative"

 

Earlier in the summer, I had occasion to rent a car while traveling over a long weekend in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.   Although I never do so at home, I always tune in the AM radio “preaching channels” when driving out of state.   I get a lot of entertainment out of listening to these small local stations where old-time preachers still go at it.  This perverse pleasure does me no credit--and my wife lectures me about it -- but I relish them in the same way as someone would enjoy a carnival sideshow.  Even here in the South, such broadcasts are relics of an earlier time.  That said, I am more at home in that world than I would be in the schmaltzy Christian praise music stations on the FM side of things.

Most of the broadcasting consists of recorded sermons from local congregations (invariably either Baptist or Pentecostal), itinerant small-time “radio preacher” segments, and recordings of evangelists with a national audience.  The local characters are the best—and the most revealing—but I soon realized that the syndicated national figures fill the largest segment of broadcast time.  And of this number, three in particular loom large:  Dr. Adrian Rogers, Dr. David Jeremiah and Dr. Tony Evans.

Dallas-based Dr. Evans is the best of the lot, and I heard several of his sermons back and forth on I-85.  Maybe I caught him on a particular tangent, but he surprised me a little with his repeated preaching on the wrath of God. 

I found Dr. Jeremiah, head of a California mega-church, to be the least credible.  He harped on “the Rapture” with planes falling out of skies as their pilots were taken, buses careening off highways as their drivers were taken, men coming home from work to find their wife had been taken, etc. , as if this was settled matter-of-fact theology.   Of course he hawked his upcoming Caribbean Cruise Conference, and later his Holy Land Tour--in other words, a religious huckster.  Several years ago, I had lunch with an old church friend from my previous life.   By that time I had long since “swam the Bosporus,” as they say, and was dried-off and comfortable on the other side.   He had  always been dissatisfied with our church and during the entire time of our acquaintance had either been halfway in or almost completely out, but not quite.  To my knowledge, that is his condition yet.  He turged me to listen to some tapes that would revolutionize my life, from a preacher that really, really had it together, etc.  Well, it turned out to be this Dr. Jeremiah guy.  Thanks, but no thanks. 

If you spend any time with these stations, you are going to hear a LOT of Dr. Adrian Rogers, the late Baptist minister of a Memphis mega-church.  Dr. Rogers was as smooth a preacher as I’ve ever heard—and I do not necessarily mean that as a compliment.  He spoke with an exaggerated accent that some Southern evangelists seem to prefer (Billy Graham, for one.)  Anyway, the sermon that caught my interest was one on the “infallible, inerrant, incontestable Bible.”  The talk was standard evangelical bibliolatry until Dr. Rogers dipped his toe into church history.  He referenced the persecutions under Diocletian, though in his telling it was the emperor’s “War on the Bible.”  He elaborated that Diocletian burned a Bible and then erected a monument above it declaring “Extincto nomini christianorum,” or for the Latin impaired, “The name of Christian is extinct.”    I googled the phrase and all that appears is the same little snippet on innumerable  Protestant websites, usually as an anecdote to flesh out a sermon--and never sourced.  Well, Diocletian may have very well burned some scriptures and erected such a monument--or it could just be an evangelical urban legend. 

It matters not, for Diocletian’s war was certainly not against the “Bible.”  Somehow, I expected more of Dr. Rogers than that.  Either he was grossly ignorant of how, and more particularly when the “Bible” came together, or he was being purposely disingenuous.  Close to ninety more years would have to pass before such a statement could be conceivably, if not practically, true.  Certainly Diocletian would have had the Christian scriptures destroyed given the opportunity—whether they be the letters assembled later into what became known as the New Testament, or other writings of the early church fathers.  But his "war,” if you will, was on Christians, based on who they were, what they did and what they would not do, rather than on their particular scriptures, much less a “Bible” that arrived much later on the scene.

Dr. Rogers was not content to leave it there, however.  He continued on--that the Council of Nicea in 325 AD declared the Bible to be “the infallible word of God.”  Here he proceeds from the twisting of history to outright fabrication.  I fear that in our broad American Christianist culture, that it is this sort of thing which passes for historical knowledge.  It reminds me of my own attempt in my old church to find anything approximating our view of “New Testament Christianity” between 100 AD and Alexander Campbell.  For a while, I latched on to the Paulicians, of all people, but dropped that before I embarrassed myself unduly.

All this came to mind when I recently read an article of Peter J. Leithart at the First Things site.  I am somewhat familiar with Dr. Leithart who is a Protestant of the Reformed persuasion, I believe.  I do not follow his writings, however, nor do I frequent the FT site.  Leithart begins as follows:

Once upon a time, everyone followed a simple, relaxed, guilt-free religion, uncluttered by rites and dogmas. Along came the greedy priests, who complicated and corrupted everything. They added ceremonies and demanded payment for their performance, elaborated precise doctrines, and persecuted deviants, and in all this perverted the God-and-me immediacy of true religion. It’s as predictable as gravity: From the beginning, every religion devolves from primitive purity to decadent ritualism.

Leithart agrees with John Milbank that this myth is the “liberal Protestant metanarrative” and that it “has had a remarkably long run.”  Realizing that many would be uncomfortable with his characterization as liberal, Leithart explains that it is so because “it treats religion as fundamentally an internal reality, regards ceremonies as expendable distractions, and advocates free expression and universal toleration.”

 Despite its age, the liberal Protestant metanarrative continues to influence not only religious studies but also…the social sciences of religion. Outside the academy, it continues to be a foundation myth for a large segment of Protestantism, and not only liberal Protestantism…[for] immediacy is the defining characteristic of Evangelicalism, and any Protestant who gives too central a place to liturgy and sacraments is driven from the camp. Evangelicals recoil when told they sound like liberals, but the underlying notion of religion is the same, and it suggests that the liberal Protestant metanarrative has become the Protestant metanarrative, pure and simple.

Leithart goes on to advocate a rooting-out or reformation, if you will, of this “metanarrative” for the future health of Protestantism.    But I do not see, Lutherans and Anglican notwithstanding, how can there be one without the other?

Georgian Chronicle (5)--When in Udabno

When in Udabno, discerning diners can be found at the Oasis Club Restaurant Bar, the town's finest establishment.

I couldn't resist a little travel guide silliness, but lunch in Udabno turned out to be one of the highlights of my recent time in the Republic of Georgia.

The day began at Mtskheta, visiting Svetitskhoveli Cathedral early on, planning to push on to Davit Gareja during the middle of the day and reach Sighnaghi before nightfall--an ambitious schedule given the general state of Georgian roads.  I have been to Davit Gareja monastery twice before, but was anxious to return again.

St. Davit, one of the thirteen Syrian Fathers, founded the monastic complex in the 6th-Century, and the institution has loomed large in Georgian history ever since.  In a country chock-a-block with holy sites, Davit Gareja occupies a special place.  On Pascha, in 1615, Shah Abbas of Persia ordered thousands of monks beheaded at Davit Gareja.  The Soviets shut it down in 1921 and were using it for target practice in 1987.  The authorities relented after widespread student demonstrations (as noted in a previous post, the modern story of Georgian Orthodoxy is largely that of the young.)  The Georgian government tried to do the same thing again in 1997, but were once more stopped by student protestors.  The site is an active monastic center today. 

The monastery perches on a ridge in the far southeastern corner of Georgia, actually on the Azeri border.  In my estimation, the landscape very much resembles eastern Wyoming or Montana--grasslands as far as one can see on these broad, rolling hills.  Hay is being baled in some of the fields, and other hillsides Georgian cowboys herd their cattle.  In the immediate vicinity of Davit Gareja, the countryside takes on an almost surreal look, with the hills suddenly peaking into jagged, rocky escarpments.  Going by bus, it takes about an hour and a half to reach the monastery once you turn off the main road at Sagarejo.

The first 70% of the distance can be covered in about half the time, as the road becomes more problematic past Udabno (which means, quite literally "desert".)  This is the only settlement between Sagarelo and Davit Gareja, and a more improbable one would be hard to imagine.

The residents of Udabno are ethnically Svan, from a village in the High Caucasus in the opposite corner of the country--a region as completely at variance with these wide open Kakhetian vistas as one could imagine.  Several decades ago, a landslide swept away a mountain village.  In true Soviet style, the authorities transported these villagers en masse across the country to this location.  Here the government did what the bureaucrats knew to do--they erected a model town, one concrete block house after another, located 20 kilometers past the middle of nowhere.

Udabno is a pretty dismal looking place.  Those who have had the wherewithal to go elsewhere have apparently done so.  The shells of abandoned houses litter the outskirts of  Udabno, resembling nothing so much as perhaps a movie set for Hollywood's latest post-apocalyptic thriller.

A young Polish couple, noting a steady stream of vehicles making the trek back and forth to Davit Gareja saw something else--opportunity.  The took one of the abandoned shells and slapped on a coat of white, green and blue paint.  That, plus a little electricity, a freezer, stove and beer tap, and  some crates and boxes for tables and chairs, and voila, the Oasis Club Restaurant Cafe. 

This was our fifth day into Georgia, and the food seemed to just get better and better the further we went.  All the staples were in place--bread, tomato and cucumber salad, eggplant dishes, khachapuri, the cheese plate, watermelon, tarragon soda, draft beer, more khachapuri, etc.  

 

Several additional items, however, launched this particular feast to the top of my list.  First, there was the Udabno cheese.  Georgia is known for its regional cheeses, and every meal contained a plate of three to four varieties.  The local Udabno cheese was the best of the lot.  I think I would return, if only for the cheese.  Next, there was the bowl of ratatouille (pictured here.)  Oh man, it was wonderful.  Then our hosts presented us with the kubdari, a Svan dish.  This looked like the ubiquitous khachapuri (cheese bread), but wonder of wonders, it was filled with meat!  Any traditional culture that is worth its salt will have a meat pie, and kubdari is the Georgian version.    

We finished off our feast by relaxing with some ice cream, as well as some lattes and iced coffees.  Soso found time for a game or two of backgammon in the inside dining room.  Cathleen worked on commandeering some of the special "Svantian salt."  I am no "foodie," but some meals stand out in my mind.  Sitting on a crate at the back of the Oasis Club Restaurant Cafe will not soon be forgotten.

At the time of our departure, the road was stacking-up with customers coming back from Davit Gareja.  Our hosts scurried around to tend to everyone, and suggested we stop on our return and settle-up then.  Try doing something like that in the good old USA. We did stop and pay our tab on the way back.  At that time, the electricity had gone out.  Perhaps a generator should be the next capital improvement at the Oasis Club Restaurant Cafe.  We wouldn't want the beer to go warm.

Georgian Chronicle (4)--The State of Orthodoxy in Georgia

Gelati Cathedral, near Kutaisi, Georgia

     Over the course of eleven days in Georgia, I visited twenty-two different Orthodox churches (as well as one synagogue.)  Only four  were in Tbilisi, the rest scattered all around the country.  Based on my observations, I will venture some tentative conclusions about the health of Georgian Orthodoxy.

     The nature of Orthodox worship makes it difficult to talk in terms of real numbers.  Hard figures are easier to come by in American Protestantism where membership rolls are generally maintained, and attendance taken during Sunday School and/or worship.  Orthodoxy just does not work that way, even in the U.S., much less traditional Orthodox countries.  Projected numbers in American Orthodox jurisdictions came in for some well-deserved criticism several years ago.  The OCA's figures proved especially egregious.    

     American Orthodox--perhaps looking for encouragement and validation from the Old World--sometimes view these traditional Orthodox cultures with rose-colored glasses.  And so, we should be clear-eyed about any claims of Orthodox ascendancy elsewhere.  Reports of the growing churches of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the explosive growth among the Mayans of Guatemala and southern Mexico appear genuine (Guatemala is now the largest per capita Orthodox country in the Western Hemisphere.)  A recent headline proclaiming Orthodoxy the fastest-growing religion in Ireland, however, is easily shot down.  Yes, there are 45,000 Orthodox Christians in that country, four times the number in 2002.  That is good news, to be sure, but a break-down of the numbers reveal that 26% are Romanian, 12.6% are Latvian, etc.  Only 20% (9,000) are native-born.  And Muslims in Ireland number 49,000.  When native-born Orthodox Irish outnumber the Muslims, then that will be news.  Most everyone agrees that the Russian church has undergone a remarkable revival in the post-Communist years, yet the number of actual church-goers is paltry relative to the total population.  That observation holds for Balkan Orthodoxy, as well.

     Georgia is often touted (rightly, I believe) as the exception to this pattern.  Indeed, I would contend that the Georgian model is perhaps the most robust expression of the Faith today.   One should keep in mind that the Orthodox Church here has always been a bit different, and for lack of a better word, Georgia-centric.  The church venerates a host of saints representing 1,900 years of their Christian witness, who are largely unknown to the Orthodox outside of Georgia.  The church has never been just an extension of Constantinople or Moscow, but has instead looked to Jerusalem (and Syria.)  And it seems that Georgian Orthodoxy-even from its founding narratives-has maintained a fascinating connection with Judaism.

     The revival of Orthodoxy here is nothing short of remarkable.  In 1917, 2,455 working churches exised in the country.  By the latter Soviet years, only 80 survived.  Today there are 1,700 Georgian priests and new church construction is evident across the country.  Ilia II, the Patriarch since 1977, remains the most beloved and respected figure in the country.  And yet, a few cautionary words are in order.  Communism failed as an economic system, yet was very successful, over several generations, in changing the natural order of things.  Merab Mamardashvili wrote the following in 1995:

I used to think that, as the Georgians loved life, had a sense of humor, managed to preserve their heart and ancient chivalry and had thus remained individualists, sceptics etc, they could not be fully enslaved...I came back and found this was an illusion, that the process of mental, spiritual, verbal degradation had gone too far.

Hopefully Mamardashvili's gloomy prognostication from the dark days of 1995 has not proved to be absolutely correct.  But for those who were born and came of age during the Soviet years, any return to Orthodoxy has been more problematic.  For many, the icons may be back up upon the walls at home, but little more.  I am currently reading Donald Rayfield's excellent and much-needed history, Edge of Empires.  I scanned the ending chapters first--the short-lived Republic of 1918, the Soviet annexation, the years of occupation, and the troubled transition to "democracy."   This compelling account of 75 years of brutality and gangsterism leads one to wonder how much of anything survived at all (and it must be noted, that the violence was more often Georgian against Georgian, rather than Soviet Russian against Georgian.)   Within this context, the ambivalence of some older Georgians to the Church is understandable. 

     And admittedly, most of the Georgian churches I visited were pilgrimage destinations, the historic churches and monasteries that have great meaning to the country's history.  My impression of the state of the Faith would be more balanced, for example, if I I had visited a church out among the Soviet-era block apartments in the Tbilisi suburbs, rather than the great churches of the old city.  

    That said,  twenty-two churches later, I left Georgia with a clear and consistent image of Georgian Orthodoxy.  With perhaps one exception--Ikalto--every church we visited, no matter which day, was alive with people.  The churches there are not the empty museum pieces you find in western Europe (as well as in Italy, I am told).  Priests, monks, and/or nuns are in evidence throughout.  We never really had a church to ourselves, but were merely one more group in the stream of pilgrims and regular worshippers wherever we went.  The candles never went out.  For Vespers and Divine Liturgy, the churches often had to spill out into their courtyards--not only at Sioni in Tbilisi, but at Gelati in Kutaisi.  Now at first glance, those milling about the outside of the churches might not appear to be worshippers at all, given that they may be chatting or talking on their cellphones.  But watch them, and before long they will filter back into the church.  In some ways, Georgian worship appears a bit more casual natural than that to which we are accustomed, with more movement and general milling about.  As was explained to me, Georgians believes that whenever they are in the church they should be prayerful.  If they find themselves in not so prayerful a state of mind, they may step outside for a bit until they feel it is appropriate to return.  In Sioni on Sunday morning, the atmosphere could only be described as a crush of people.  The same applied for Anchiskhati and Sameba. 

     But here is the most important point that I have been building up to.  The churches were overwhelmingly comprised of young people--teenagers, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings.  The priests, monks and nuns were equally youthful, it seemed to me.  Certainly there were the grandparents in attendance, but for the most part the Georgian Orthodox Church seems to be the church of the young.  Now, my contacts assure me that plenty of youth are not the least interested in religion at all, nor do I know the percentage of the total youth demographic that these worshippers represent.  But it really does not matter, for enough of a critical mass is in place to ensure a vigorous future.  A recent BBC article notes that while "over 80% of Georgia's 4.5 million people say they belong to the Georgian Orthodox Church...only about 15%-25% actively participate in rituals."  So, in one sense, Georgia is broadly culturally Orthodox, in the same manner as Greece, the Balkans and Russia.  But when you think about it--especially considering Georgia's three generations of Communism--the figure of 25% who "actively participate" is actually pretty darn good for the 21st-Century.

     One can hardly over-emphasize the role of His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II in the revival of Georgian Orthodoxy.  He has wisely guided the Church through the minefield of late Soviet and post Soviet Georgian politics, generally avoiding public stances on contentious issues other than to encourage restraint and prayer.  One of our tour members knew a Georgian-American who knew someone who worked in the Patriarchate.  Through these connections, we received permission to visit the Patriarch on the last night of our stay.   The main building of the compound is a long three-story structure facing a busy street hugging the west shoreline of the Mhkvari River (the Patriarch lives in an apartment on the third floor, with the rest of the facility devoted to administration.)  A high stone wall wraps around the north, south and west sides of the property.  The narrow enclosure contains a large convent, an exquisite chapel and a lush, semi-tropical garden, complete with a peacock strolling within. 

     As dusk approached, our entrance into this world had an almost magical feel.  As one would imagine, the little Church of the Annunciation contained some of the best Georgian iconography, replete with Georgian saints and an interesting panel depicting the Prophet Jonah.  From the church, we were escorted to the Patriarch's third floor office, where we waited for some time.  At this time, a delegation of international scholars was just leaving the building after a meeting with the Patriarch. The walls of the office were filled with his artwork, secular and religious.  The Patriarch is devoted to David the Psalmist, and the icon he wrote of King David hangs on the wall (and is becoming a popular icon throughout Georgia.)  Several people from the Patriarchate came in and introduced themselves and waited with us.  They expressed pleasant surprise that we were American and Orthodox. 

     One of these was Tsisana, our liaison there.  Back during the Ahbkasian wars of the early 1990s, she came to the Patriarchate to help out with those who needed medical attention.  She now runs the free clinic there.  Georgian doctors donate their services for those who cannot afford regular medical care (and the subject of the excellent Georgian medical care without the insurance industry deserves a separate post.)  At that same time, the Patriarchate and the convent started a daily soup kitchen to help feed as many of the refugees as possible.  4,000 meals were served every day during the worst of the crisis.  Even today, 250 meals are served up on a daily basis.  After a while, one aide brought in a stack of books--hardbound copies of the Patriarch's homilies (in English), gifts to us from him.  

     In time, we were ushered back downstairs and out into the courtyard, underneath the stars.  From this point on, the exact order of events is jumbled in the mystical haze of my memory.  The Patriarch was there, sitting in a simple arm chair.  A few attendants hovered about, including a 6' 4" body-builder whom I assumed to be his bodyguard.  He waited on his charge as tenderly and as attentively as any nurse.  The Patriarch is now weighted-down in years, a frail little man whose voice is almost inaudible, who has trouble standing and whose hands shake with palsy.  And yet his eyes were alert and burned bright.  

     A priest received an emotional blessing.  John Graham squatted in front of the Patriarch and explained who we were.  Each of us advanced forward, among the others, and received a blessing.  Four of our number were choir members of the same parish in New Jersey.  They had purchased an icon--the original written by the Patriarch himself--as a gift to a Georgian Orthodox Church in their state, and he blessed it.  One of the nuns approached John with a request. The Patriarch has mentioned that he would enjoy hearing the four chant.  Nervously, they eased up to his side and chanted in church Slavonic. (they are from a heavily ethnic parish.) After that, he whispered something to John Graham, and they then chanted in English.  The Patriarch told John that he would rather they sing something in American.  Of course, they were all very honored to have this privilege. 

     We stood in the moonlight, around a 400-year old olive tree (a recent gift from an Jewish native of Georgia, now living in Israel), clutching our books of Homilies, and munching on the fresh apricots and cherries that were being passed around.  A trio of nuns gently sang Alleluia in the background.  They were all young, their faces joyous, if not radiant.  I knew this before going to Georgia, but there is just something about Orthodox nuns.  Tsisana told us that the Patriarch had these informal audiences every night, that they would go on until 2:00 in the morning, and then the new day would begin with morning prayers at 6:00 A.M.  We lingered as long as we could, reluctant to leave this blessed garden.  But we had to return to the hotel, as some of us were leaving for the airport in less than four hours.  Before doing so, we pressed money into Tsisana's hand, for use at the clinic.  With tearful eyes, she thanked us, but asked if she could give it to the soup kitchen instead, as the need was greater there.  How typical of Georgian generosity--you give them something and they are thinking of who might need it more.  (This to be a subject of another post.)  

     Earlier that day, I was in Sameba Cathedral in Tbilisi.  Truth be told, the behavior of some of the crowd that morning was not exactly spiritually edifying.  But one vignette stands out in my memory.  A Georgian woman, probably  within a few years either side of forty, dressed attractively but in a traditional manner, was escorting two young children--a skinny girl of about eight, and a boy still in shorts, aged about five.  They were making the rounds of the icons and the candle stands.  She was there with them, but neither child needed instructions on what to do.  The girl could reach the icons easily enough.  The boy, however, was still too short.  On his tiptoes, he could barely stretch to kiss the bottom of the frame.  But at every icon stand, he gave it everything he had.  This is the remembrance I carried home with me.  Orthodoxy will continue to blossom in these mellow Caucasian valleys.

     I never cease to be amazed at the level of American historio-geographic ignorance and indifference (or at least in my corner of the country.)  At a meeting, a young executive overheard where I had been.  "Wow," she said, "that's a real mission field."  The images of Georgia came flooding back, and I had a sudden flash of anger at this casual, uninformed arrogance.  I simply replied, "No.  They need to send missionaries to us."

    

In the Patriarchate