The 300

I haven't yet seen 300, other than some clips on PBS. And I doubt that I will, until perhaps it is released on dvd. (For someone who doesn't even watch hospital shows on television because of the operating room scenes, the gore-fest that is 300 would be a little much). Some critics have panned the film as an overly-simplistic good vs. evil morality play, and have questioned its historical veracity (to which I would ask, just which historical era has Hollywood not butchered?) But, the Battle of Thermopylae was indeed a pivotal moment in history, the consequences of which have reverberated down through the ages. And from what clips I have seen, this particular re-telling of the epic seems to be one incredible movie.

The fact that the movie has generated world-wide debate speaks to its significance. Of course, voices within Islam, particularly from Iran, have protested against the film, saying that it casts the East in a purely negative light and reinforces existing stereotypes: the West (Sparta)=good, the East (Persia)=bad, which in turn unnecessarilly inflames existing present-day tensions between the two regions. And of course, as in the case of the Danish cartoons, such protestations are carried to extremes.

Mustafa Akyol is a noted young Turkish writer and commentator. He can generally be relied upon as a voice of reason on issues that too often become inflamed (see his blog, the White Path). Outside of the spectacular cinematography, he finds little to commend.

The message that the film is designed to give is all too obvious: Western civilization (which is free, rational and beautiful) has always defended itself against the barbaric East (which is tyrannical, irrational and ugly). And the saga just continues today.

Akyol pinpoints 3 areas of concern:

1. the movie is cast as a prelude for today's "clash of civiliztions,"
2. the movie is wildly unrealistic, and
3. that Sparta was in fact a bastion of fascism, not liberty.

I believe Akyol over-reacts somewhat. The movie is an entertainment product, not a vehicle for political propoganda. But he does raise some valid points. Akyol observes that the neocons who find validation in the story of a small, corageous band (Sparta) standing firm against an oppressive superpower (Persia) need to rethink the analogy. Who is the superpower today, he asks? We are. His second point is also valid. As he notes: "some of their soldiers, with their turbaned heads, look quite like the Islamist warriors of today." He finds this to be intentional. Perhaps so. In my view, a most glaring inaccuracy is the weird depiction of Xerxes himself. I would have thought that they would have paid at least a passing glance to the archeological record. And his final point has some merit, as well. If we are looking for ancient Greeks to emulate, we might pause before choosing the Spartans, as theirs was a fiercely militaristic society. Akyol even brings up the whole homosexuality issue concerning Sparta, which the film glosses over and/or ignores. (While not "homosexual" in the modern understanding of the word, the 300 did fight as couples. And of course, neither the ancient Persians or modern Turks can afford to throw any stones in that area.)

Akyol's essay can be found, here.

Spengler, takes on Iran's tantrum over the movie and weaves it into his larger view of imperial Persian ambitions here. He writes:

These new imperial ambitions inspire Iran's impassioned defense of the ancient Persian Empire, which, as noted, trample over the Koran's clear view of the matter. What upsets the Persians is not the inaccuracies of 300, a Hollywood genre film with few pretenses at historical authenticity. They simply don't like the fact that the Persians lost.

Never one to mince words, Spengler continues:

On the surface, the most objectionable departure from historical fact is the figure of Persia's King Xerxes, who is portrayed as a monstrous, body-pierced, sexually ambiguous monster prancing madly about the battlefield. That is fanciful, to be sure, but conveys a deeper truth about the character of Persian rulers, who were among the most lascivious, concupiscent, slothful, sensual, deceitful and greedy gang of louts who ever had the misfortune to reign.

Check out what he has to say.

On Death and Dying

In my recent reading of Fr. Alexander Schmemann's Journals, I found that he had quite a lot to say on the subject of death and dying. This has always been of interest to me as well, and has been somewhat on my mind in the last few months. I have been curious to what extent people really think about death and dying. In our culture, at least, it seems most everyone is in full-fledged denial, rushing madly to occupy every waking moment with activity--doing everything, anything to avoid the essential reality of their existence. So much so, that when the time comes, some seem actually surprised by it all, and surviving family members may act as though fate has played a cruel and unusual trick on them.

Our avoidance can even be somewhat comical. I purchased my first home when I was 22, in what was characterized as a transitional neighborhood. A, shall we say, "colorful" Pentecostal widow lady lived next door. She tied dozens of artificial red flowers to a shrub in her front yard, so that it would "bloom" all year long. She also fashioned a commode into a planter for her petunias. That too, in the front yard. You get my drift. Anyway, at the drop of a hat, she would testify that she was Heaven-bound, ready to go, right now! Her commitment to leaving, however, was somewhat suspect, for in almost the same breath, she was just as apt to tell you about the time when she was having a heart attack and prayed to God to deliver her--and He did!

One often hears the complaint--particularly as people age--how life is going faster and faster, the years slipping away from them, so to speak. And of course, this is true in light of God and eternity--In the morning they are like grass which grows up: In the morning it flourishes and grows up; In the evening it is cut down and withers. And yet, I wonder if the people who harp on this theme are in fact those most disconnected with the rhythm and routineness of death? For the fracturing of our communal, familial and tribal ties is a legacy of our modern (and now post modern) world, as is the resultant disconnect with death.

I have never really felt this, and still do not. In my mind, the years of my youth and early 20s seem like ages and ages ago. I recall a quote from Donald Davidson, the Southern writer, who said "life is long enough to live." This actually seems much a paraphrase of Seneca's axiom, "life, if well lived, is long enough." There is wisdom here, and I find it more in keeping with an authentically Christian view of reality.

Fr. Schmemann had keen insight into our society's attempted dismissal of death and dying. His characterizations from 30 years ago are even more accurate today.

Fear of death comes from bustle, fuss, not from happiness. When one bustles around and suddenly remembers death, death seems totally absurd, horrible. But when one reaches quiet and happiness, one contemplates and accepts death quite differently....In happiness, in genuine happiness, one always feels the presence of eternity in the heart, so that happiness is open to death. (p. 33)

And later:

Death is in the center of religion and of culture, and one's attitude towards death determines one's attitude toward life. Any denial of death only increases the neurosis (immortality) as does its acceptance (asceticism, denial of the flesh). Only victory over death is the answer, and it presupposes transcendence of both denial and acceptance--"death consumed by victory." The question is "What is this victory?" Quite often the answer is forgotten. Therefore one is helpless in dealing with death. Death reveals--must reveal--the meaning not of death, but of life. Life must not be a preparation for death, but victory over death, so that, in Christ, death becomes the triumph of life. We teach about life without relation to death, and about death as unrelated to life. When it considers life only as a preparation for death, Christianity makes life meaningless, and reduces death to "the other world," which does not exist, because God has created only one world, one life. It makes Christianity and death meaningless, as victory; it does not solve the neurosis of death. Interest about the fate of the dead beyond the grave makes Christian eschatology meaningless. The church does not pray about the dead; it is (must be) their continuous Resurrection, because the Church is life in death, victory over death, the universal Resurrection. (p. 45)

This is a particularly powerful passage for me, for in all my earlier years as a Protestant, I never, ever heard it articulated quite this way. Of course we heard countless exhortations for hope after death, innumerable sermons about Christ's atoning sacrifice on the Cross, and a myriad of allusions to the beauties and wonders of Heaven. Yet, despite it all, in some sense we were unsure what to make of death, swinging from "super-assurance" to doubt. But what Fr. Schmemann describes; this over-arching view of death as victory and triumph, this trampling down of death by death and the view of the Church as life in death, I have only found in the fullness of the Faith.

Fr. Schmemann also thought that people have not so much abandoned belief in God, but rather they have lost their fear of God and knowledge of the reality of death.

People have stopped believing not in God or gods, but in death, in eternal death, in its inevitability--hence, they stopped believing in salvation. The seriousness of religion was first of all in the serious choice that a person considered obvious, between death and salvation. People say that disappearance of fear is good, although the essential experience of life is facing death. The saints did not become saints because of fear, but because they knew the fear of God. The contemporary understanding of religion as self-fulfillment is rather cheap. The devil is eliminated, then hell, then sin--and nothing is left except consumer goods. But there is much more fear, even religious fear in the world than ever before--but it is not at all the fear of God. (p. 63)

Fr. Schmemann pinpoints one sure proof of our death-denial--the shuffling off of the dying to the realm of hospitals, nursing homes, funeral homes, etc. His portrayal of a nursing home visit to an aging bishop is especially poignant.

The impression is not only of a death cell, but precisely of the devilish absurdity of such a gathering, of every "settler" condemned not only to his decay and his dying, but also to the sight--life in a mirror--of the same decay and dying all around. Man must die at home! There must not be this awful isolation, this multiplication of dying, of disintegration. But there is the question: How does one resolve this situation in practice in this frightening and unfeeling world, totally dependent on economic possibilities and impossibilities. (p. 239)

I also appreciate what Athanasius wrote, in his On the Incarnation, on Christians and death:

...instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead....death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection.

And finally, thumbing back through an old common-place book, I found the following by Malcolm Muggeridge:

Like a prisoner awaiting his release, like a schoolboy when the end of term is near, like a migrant bird ready to fly south...I long to be gone. Extricating myself from the flesh I have too long inhabited, hearing the key turn in the lock of time so that the great doors of eternity swing open, disengaging my tired mind from its interminable conundrums and my tired ego from its wearisome insistencies. Such is the prospect of death.

The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983

I must be the last kid on the block to read Fr. Schmemann's Journal. Once started, I could not put it down--a treasure of a book, by a remarkable man. What strikes one is his brutal honesty and tender humanity. Schmemann was a man of many interests, and his journal entries are wide-ranging. Along the way, he expressed great appreciaton for some of my personal favorites--the writings of Flannery O'Connor and Julian Green, as well as, of all things...."Fawlty Towers."

His frustrations are well-documented--clericalism, academic pettiness, the artificial "busyness" that can pass for church life, the dimunition of joy in the Liturgy, the baseness of Western society and what he refers to as "Byzantinism." But the journal is far from a chronicle of complaint. Schmemann always came back to the simple joy of life in Christ, for as he said, "there is undoubtedly only one joy: to know Him and share Him with each other." His last entry before his death was "What happiness it has all been!"

For some of the best ruminations on Schememann, review Scrivener's 13-part series, here.

Much Better Now, Thanks!

After 2 long weeks, the staples are now out, the catheter has been removed, and I am within days of being able to drive again. So, my recovery from surgery is coming along nicely. I want to thank everyone who visited, called, encouraged me by email, and offered up prayers on my behalf. This experience has taught me a few things about humility and gratitude, the nature of true friendship, and most especially, prayer. Until this last year, I have barrelled through life with barely a runny nose. For the first time, I am on the receiving end of prayer for the sick. Now I understand.

Spengler, Europe and Orthodoxy

Spengler, in “Europe is not the sum of its parts,” makes some interesting observations regarding Europe’s continuing quest for a constitution. Basically, he sees no way forward for a constitution or a European government, as Europe is increasingly divorced from what made it Europe in the first place--the Church. He notes that it was the “unified Europe of Church and Empire [that] created the nations along with the languages and cultures,” and believes “as individual nations, Europe's constituent countries will die on the vine.”

Spengler concurs with Belloc's quip - "Europe is the faith, the faith is Europe," and finds Voltaire to be only half right, for the "Holy Roman Empire was neither Roman nor an empire, but it was holy. European monarchs donned the robes of ancient Rome like small children playing dress-up...but the unifying concept of Christendom is what made it possible to create nations out of the detritus of Rome and the rabble of invading barbarians."

What really caught my eye, however, was Spengler's closing:

To recapture Europe means re-creating the faith. It is hard to imagine that the Roman Catholic Church might re-emerge as Europe's defining institution. The European Church is enervated. But I do not think that is the end of the matter. As I argued last month, Russia has become the frontier between Europe and the Islamic world and, unlike Europe, is not prepared to dissolve quietly into the ummah. Pope Benedict's recent pilgrimage to Turkey, it must be remembered, only incidentally dealt with Catholic relations with Islam; first of all it was a gesture to Orthodoxy in the form of a visit to the former Byzantium, its spiritual home.

Franz Rosenzweig, that most Jewish connoisseur of Christianity, believed that the Church of Peter (Rome) and the Church of Paul (Protestantism) would yield place to the Church of John (Orthodoxy) - that the churches of works and faith would be transcended by the church of love. If Europe has a future, it lies in an ecumenical alliance of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and at least some elements of Anglicanism.

For the time being, Europe's constitution will be stillborn. But Europe is not yet dead. Russia is the place to watch, and the quiet conversation of Catholicism is the still, small voice to listen for.

I recommend this article.

The Infidel

The Dallas Morning News recently published an excerpt from Ayann Hirsi Ali's new best-seller, Infidel. Ali's story is becoming increasingly well-known. This strikingly beautiful and fearless 37-year old is an internationally renowned spokeswoman against the oppression of Muslim women. She escaped from Somalia in 1992 and sought asylum in the Netherlands. Ms. Hirsi Ali went on to repudiate Islam and gain a seat in the Dutch Parliament. In 2003, she collaborated with Dutch director Theo van Gough in the filming of Submission, Part 1. This, in turn, led directly to his brutal murder by a young Moroccan immigrant. The assassination rocked Europe, and did more than anything to shake the continent from it's contented and delusional lethargy. Ms. Hirsi Ali has been under a death threat since that time. She left Parliament in 2006 and moved to the US, where she is a fellow for the American Enterprise Institute. She remains heavily guarded at all times, yet continues to speak out. Infidel is her story.

Ayann Hirsi Ali pulls no punches. Three excerpts follow:

In Islam, unlike in Christianity and Judaism, the relationship of the individual to God is one of total submission, slave to master. As Islam is conceived, any kind of disagreement with Allah is insolence because it assumes equality with Him. I felt that liberation of Muslim women must be preceded by liberation of the mind from this rigid, dogmatic obedience to Allah's dictates. Allah is constantly referred to in the Quran as "the most compassionate, the most merciful"; He also says several times that he has given us a will of our own. In that case, I wonder, why would He mind a little debate?

I called the film Submission, Part 1, because I saw this as the first in a series that would tackle the master-slave relationship of God and the individual. My message was that the Quran is an act of man, not of God. We should be free to interpret it; we should be permitted to apply it to the modern era in a different way, instead of performing painful contortions to try to re-create the circumstances of a horrible distant past.

People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.

The full article can be found here.

But as admirable as she is, I find myself uncomfortable with Ms. Hirsi Ali's struggle. For she has replaced her faith with, well, no faith at all. Ali's response to a destructive faith is a life devoid of faith. She writes, I said goodbye to Theo. He himself didn't believe in a Hereafter. I no longer believe in a Hereafter. And so this was it, I thought: This is the end. No, but it is sad.

Rod Dreher speaks to this concern in an excellent article, here. He notes that she is a tragic hero, three times over. (And please pardon the lengthy quotes.)

Though she is more staunchly European in her beliefs than many Europeans, her countrymen want her to shut up. She reminds them of their own cowardice in the face of aggressive domestic Islamism and of the utter failure of Europe's multiculturalist ideals....that is Ms. Hirsi Ali's first tragedy.

Her second tragedy is even more dispiriting: She has probably arrived too late. Ms. Hirsi Ali forces Europeans to confront their own helplessness in the face of a civilizational threat entirely of their own making.

Ms. Hirsi Ali's final tragedy is that what she preaches is leading to the triumph of what she most fears. Having escaped a cruel culture dominated by religion, she understandably despises faith. But religion per se was not what oppressed Ms. Hirsi Ali; it was a particular religion, Islam. The militant secularism Ms. Hirsi Ali advocates has already created a spiritual vacuum in Europe that Islam is filling.


Dreher concludes:

An exhausted Europe is dying from its lack of spiritual dynamism. Europe has set its prosperous face against the religious foundation upon which its post-classical civilization was built. As European Christianity breathes its last, the hedonism, moral relativism and consumerism that have replaced it cannot muster the wherewithal even to have babies, much less resist a confrontational Islam....As post-Christian Europe shuffles toward senescence, Islam's vital energy waxes. No one who cherishes the achievements of the West – including free speech, democracy, minority rights and equality for women – can see their crushing lack in the Islamic world and view the rise of Euro-Islam with indifference....it must be conceded that Muslims today have a firm spiritual foundation for their individual and collective lives. No one can see that crushing lack among Europeans and view Euro-secularism with indifference.

There is something deeply admirable about this passionate African woman's stirring defense of Western liberties. But the question remains: What is freedom for? It cannot be an end in itself. There must be purpose beyond self-gratification. Europe is proving that materialism – the philosophical basis for the secularism and libertinism that is modern Europe's creed – is not sufficient to sustain civilization.

With their terrifying confidence, Islamic believers understand something about human nature that the West has forgotten – but will soon relearn, the hard way. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, if Europe will not have the God of the Bible, it should pay its respects to Allah.

There's nothing new here, really. Dreher and countless others have been sounding the alarm for years now. But it still needs to said, and often. The situation put me in remembrance of a passage I've just read from The Brothers Karamazov. This from Father Paissy's address to Alyosha:

Remember...that the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has...examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it...For those who renounce Christianity and rebel against it are in their essence of the same image of the same Christ, and such they remain, for until now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts have been able to create another, higher image of man and his dignity than the image shown of old by Christ. And whatever their attempts, the results have been only monstrosities.

Freeman on Dostoevsky

I always enjoy Fr. Stephen Freeman's Glory to God for All Things. In a recent post on Dostoevsky, he notes having purchased the new translation of The Brothers Karamazov. (I found this interesting as I also bought the new version a few days ago. Facing several weeks of recuperation at home following surgery, I plan to really read TBK this time.) Fr. Stephen's article is excellent, as usual, but I particularly like the following paragraph:

This reality of our age has something to do with Orthodoxy for me. The “thinness” of Protestant thought and practice do not contain enough of heaven to serve as a sufficient antidote in our modern world - at least for me. I could not be a happy Protestant without somehow becoming blind to my own culture (for to a large extent, Protestantism simply is the culture and, for me, cannot be the bearer of Kingdom of God). Our culture has spawned many religions that are essentially worship of America itself (homegrown products like Mormonism is one that comes to mind - but I would have to quickly add almost all of the Protestant Churches that I know). I like America, but I do not think it is the bearer of the Kingdom of God.

Russia's hudna with the Muslim world

Spengler is always excellent. In my opinion, his latest column on Putin’s Russia, here, is his best yet. I have long contended that--in the grand scheme of things--Russia is not our enemy. In fact, as the 21st century progresses, they may be our last natural ally. Of course, their heavy-handedness can be hard for us to take—just as our sanctimony is for them. For all the recent uproar over Putin’s Munich speech, I actually found little with which to disagree. Some excerpts from Spengler follow (emphasis mine):

Perhaps it is inevitable that Washington should misunderstand Moscow at this juncture in history. Putin has embarked on a monstrous enterprise, next to which Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor seems like a country parson. European Russia is dying, and Muslims will compose a majority of citizens of the Russian Federation by as early as 2040. But the successors of Imperial Russia, the Third Rome after the fall of Constantinople to Islam in 1453, refuse to slide without a struggle into the digestive tract of the House of Islam. Western Europe may go with a whimper rather than a bang as Muslim immigrants replace the shrinking local population, but the Russians have no such intention. Putin and his comrades will employ all the guile and violence at their command to delay the decline of European Russia. The Europeans are the emasculated remnant of a fallen civilization; for better or worse, the Russians still are real men.

Putin is playing a Great Game in Central Asia, comparable in scope to the long duel with Britain during the 19th century, but with a difference: Russia's object is no longer imperial, but existential. America's blundering about its borders in the form of "color revolutions" in the republics of the former Soviet Union is an intolerable form of interference.

It is instructive to contrast Russia's policy in Chechnya with America's catastrophic policy in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Force, duplicity and bargains with the devil are the hallmarks of Russian strategy. Free elections have brought Hamas to power in the Palestinian territories, entrenched Hezbollah in Lebanon, and set in motion a civil war in Iraq. By contrast, Putin has pacified the most stubborn Muslim population in the world, namely Chechnya, by means that horrified the world. The United States offers democracy to the Muslim world, and is universally hated; Putin destroys an entire Muslim country, and is welcomed as a friend. The question begs itself: who better understands the Islamic world, Vladimir Putin or George W Bush?

It is maddening to contemplate the denizens of Washington sipping white wine and debating the final triumph of liberal democracy and free markets in the vaunted "end of history". Russia's tragedy is beyond their comprehension. For three generations, the communist system rooted out and extirpated any soul intrepid enough to show thought or initiative. By the early 1990s, Russia's European population was a passive, sullen rabble incapable of asserting its rights; the cleverest and most adventurous emigrated. Demoralization manifested itself in high rates of alcoholism, drug use and venereal disease. Life expectancy fell from 70 years in 1990 to 65 years today. It will take two or three generations before Russians acquire the courage and the sense of civil society to determine their own destiny after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxon countries.

The only leadership left in Russia by the terrible adverse selection process of the communist system was the former secret guardians of the state, men whose unique position required them to live by their wits. The former secret-police official Vladimir Putin is the only sort of man who could rule Russia in the wake of its 20th-century tragedy. There is nothing to like about the man, but there is something to respect. Russia is fighting for its life against the odds, and there is no one left to fight for Russia but the bloody-handed fighters of the old regime.

Safe in their own continent, with a Muslim population of no more than 2 million to 3 million, composed to a great extent of educated immigrants, the Americans are incapable of understanding what Russia now faces. Yet Russia is a natural ally of the United States for the remainder of the 21st century, perhaps the only natural ally the US will have. Europe does not have the stomach to resist its gradual assimilation in the Islamic world. But Russia will resist, and it will do so ruthlessly. America's cookie-cutter approach to nation-building has been a disaster; Washington stands to learn a great deal from the tragic history of the Russian Empire.

By all means, read the entire article.

Power, Faith and Fantasy

I am currently reading Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present--and I would have been finished by now if I hadn't been side-tracked into John Ash's excellent A Byzantine Journey (which is, by the way, a worthy companion to Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain). Anyway, Israeli author Michael Oren chronicles American involvement in the region from the earliest days of the Republic. The book is balanced, to a fault, and written in a breezy, narrative style. Oren is an accomplished storyteller.

Perhaps the most intriguing part, for me, is Oren's depiction of Protestant missionary efforts, beginning in the 1820s. Somewhat surprisingly, they advocated a return of the Jewish people to Palestine from the very beginning. Of course, Christian support for Zionism really gained traction after WWII, but the basic premise had long been in place. On the other hand, they were puzzled by the existence of the 1800-year old Christian community. The Catholics, Orthodox, Melkite Catholics, Oriental Orthodox, etc. were seen as barely Christian, at best, and ripe prospects for proselytization. So, our meddlesomeness in the region has a long history.

Sad to say, American ignorance of anything predating the Reformation continues apace. I was recently reading the church bulletin of a large Protestant church. The minister (a friend of mine) is well-educated and highly intelligent--and someone whose opinion I respect. He has been in Israel recently and his on-going reports are carried in this church's bulletins. Visiting Bethlehem, he is surprised to discover that there are 15,000 Arab Christians in the city, behind the newly constructed Israeli wall. And he admits that he had been ignorant of their existence prior to the trip.

Until recent years there had been more, of course. Lots more. Even a casual reader of this blog knows this to be a special interest of mine. Middle Eastern Christians have been caught in the vise for over 1300 years now. Our politicians and preachers often seem blithely unaware of the effect we have on their ever-diminishing prospects. Even with the best of intentions, our uninformed policies and Protestant presuppositions and sensibilities often do nothing more than tighten the screws.

For more about the exodus of Christians from the Middle East, check out Robert Spencer's article, here.

The Spiritual Psalter

(No. 11)

No one can heal my disease except He Who knows the depths of the heart.

How many times have I set boundaries for myself and built walls between myself and sin! But my thoughts transgressed the boundaries and my will tore down the walls, for the boundaries were not secured by fear of God, and the walls were not founded on sincere repentance.

And again I knock at the door, that it may open for me. I do not cease to ask that I may receive what I request; and I know no shame in seeking Thy mercy, O Lord.

O Lord, my Savior! Why hast Thou forsaken me? Have mercy on me, O only Lover of mankind. Save me, a sinner, Thou only Sinless One.

Wrench me from the mire of my iniquities, that I may not be forever sullied by them. Deliver me from the jaws of the enemy, who roars as a lion and desires to swallow me up.

Rouse thy strength and come, that Thou mightest save me. Beam thy lightning and disperse his power, that he may be struck with fear and flee from Thy face, for he has not the strength to stand before Thee and before the face of those who love Thee. As soon as he perceives a sign of Thy grace, he is taken with fear of Thee and withdraws from such with shame.

And now, O Master, save me, for I flee to Thee!

from A Spiritual Psalter or Reflections on God excerpted by Bishop Theophan the Recluse from the works of our Holy Father Ephraim the Syria.

The Next Conservatism

The lead article in the February 12th issue of The American Conservative is entitled The Next Conservatism. I found it well worth a read, and believe it will appeal to those with Orthodox sensibilities. The authors contend that what passes for American conservatism today has run its course, is dead intellectually, and would be unrecognizable to the fathers of historic conservatism. They posit a rejection of ideology, as true conservatism is not an idealogy, but a way of life. They advocate a return to "retroculture."

Some excerpts:

Real conservatism rejects all ideologies, recognizing them as armed cant. In their place, it offers a way of life built upon customs, traditions, and habits—themselves the products of the experiences of many generations. Because people are capable of learning over time, when they may do so in a specific, continuous cultural setting, the conservative way of life comes to reflect the prudential virtues: modesty, the dignity of labor, conservation and saving, the importance of family and community, personal duties and obligations, and caution in innovation.

If the next conservatism is to reverse this decline and begin to recover the America we knew as recently as the 1950s...It must lead growing numbers of Americans to secede from the rotten pop culture of materialism, consumerism, hyper-sexualization, and political correctness and return to the old ways of living. The next conservatism includes “retroculture”: a conscious, deliberate recovery of the past.

So the next conservative movement is just this: a growing coalition of people who are committed to living differently. They share a common rejection of the popular culture, of a life based on wants and instant gratification, and of the ideology of multiculturalism and political correctness. They seek to work with other Americans, and perhaps Europeans as well, who know the past was better than the present and are committed to living as their ancestors did, by the rules of Western culture. They carry their quest into the political arena, lest their enemies mobilize the power of the state to crush them. But they look beyond politics to lives well lived in the old ways, as lamps for their neighbors’ footsteps, as harbingers of a world restored, and as testimonies to the only safe form of power, the power of example. We might add, as gifts to God as well.

Count me in. But if you think that Weyrich and Lind go too far in their nostalgic pining for the 1950s, you'll appreciate John Derbyshire's "yes, but" respose in the same issue, here.

About Taki

I recommend the new web magazine, Taki's Top Drawer. This is what they have to say about themselves:

About Taki
On February 5, 2007, journalist and socialite Taki Theodoracopulos launched Taki’s Top Drawer, (www.takimag.com), a conservative online magazine. Taki writes a column, the “High Life,” which has appeared in London’s The Spectator for the past twenty-five years. He writes also for National Review, the Sunday Times (London), Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Quest, among others. In 2002, Taki founded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell. Taki is a descendant of a titled family from the Ionian island of Zante. His father was a self-made shipping magnate who served in both the Greek armed forces during the World War II Balkan campaign of 1940-1941 and the anti-German resistance movement. Taki was educated at the Lawrenceville School and the University of Virginia, and is married to Princess Alexandra Schoenburg.

Why start this new online magazine? According to the just-turned-70 writer—who’s fit as a fiddle, and active in competitive martial arts—“I want to shake up the stodgy world of so-called ‘conservative’ opinion. For the past ten years at least, the conservative movement has been dominated by a bunch of pudgy, pasty-faced kids in bow-ties and blue blazers who spent their youths playing Risk in gothic dormitories, while sipping port and smoking their father’s stolen cigars. Thanks to the tragedy of September 11—and a compliant and dim-witted president—these kids got the chance to play Risk with real soldiers, with American soldiers. Patriotic men and women are dying over in Iraq for a war that was never in America’s interests. And now these spitball gunners, these chicken hawks, want to attack Iran—which is no threat to the U.S. at all. One thing I can tell you for sure, there may well be some atheists in foxholes—but you’ll never find a neocon. They prefer to send blue-collar kids out to die on their behalf, so they get to feel macho—and make up for all the times they got wedgies in prep school. It shall be our considered task to take on the chicken-hawks of this world, and give them wedgies again.”

Writers for this site will include conservative and libertarian luminaries like Paul Gottfried, R.J. Stove, Justin Raimondo, Steven Sailer, John Zmirak, Robert Spencer and many others.

“We want to reflect a traditional conservatism that prefers peace with honor to proxy wars, Western civilization to multicultural barbarism, Christendom to the European Union, and Russell Kirk to Leon Trotsky. This will undoubtedly infuriate many in the mainstream ‘conservative’ movement, who have transferred their loyalties elsewhere. It’s time to raise their blood pressure a few points—and help them burn off some of those five-course meals they’ve been eating down on K Street,” Taki said.

Promising.

Forgiveness Vespers

Last night, I participated in my first Forgiveness Vespers as an Orthodox Christian. I wasn't sure what to expect, exactly, but the service was one of the most incredibly moving experiences of my life. It is somewhat hard to describe--let's just say that you spend most of the time on the floor, prostrate, asking the forgiveness of, well....everybody.

The homily last night was simple, beautiful, and moving. We were reminded that, as the prodigal son, this is a season for our returning to our senses, and remembering the gift of forgiveness--that in our forgiving of all, we secure our own forgiveness. So, as someone who is proud and opinionated, who often pretends that sarcasm is a virtue (it is not), and who enjoys a bit of gossip and dirt as much as the next person, I humbly ask your forgiveness. Forgive me.

(Fr. Joseph Huneycutt has St. Tikhon's 1901 homily for Forgiveness Sunday, here.)

Interview with Lord Carey

I came across this short interview today with Lord George L. Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury, who is on a speaking tour of the U.S. I found his responses refreshingly clear and straight-forward, whether discussing Islam or the Anglican Communion's on-going deconstruction (at least in the northern hemisphere). Other than failing to bat down the interviewer's predictable cheap shot of equating supposed Christian violence with that of Islam, Carey's thoughts are worth a look. Read it here.

Lives of the Georgian Saints

I am current reading Lives of the Georgian Saints by Archpriest Zakaria Machitadze. I highly recommend it. The book is well done--a tight hardcover, with color icon prints of the Georgian saints, as well as many pictures of their churches and monasteries. In chronicling these little-known saints (at least to us in the West), the author also imparts a tremendous amount of Georgian history, from the first century through the Soviet era. Perhaps more so than for any nation today, the history of the Orthodox Church is the history of this country. The book would certainly make a nice gift for someone, as well as excellent Lenten reading. Copies are $29 plus $4 mailing from St. Herman Press, here.

The Shame of the Cross

In the year 1064, Turkish tribes under the leadership of Alp Arslan, overran Ani, a Armenian city of over 100,000 inhabitants. Hundreds of churches dotted the metropolis, dominated by the great cathedral church. Alp Arslan ordered that the dome of the cathedral be scaled and the great silver cross pulled down. He had the cross embedded in the threshold of his mosque, so that "true believers" could trample upon the symbol of the Christian faith as they entered. The city never recovered from the carnage and butchery that followed it's fall. Today, Ani is a windswept ruin, though the gaunt shell of the enormous cathedral still stands.

A thousand years later, any battles over the cross are not so epic or spectacular--at least here in the West. There are no walls to scale, few defenders, and often as not, those inside the walls have already done the preparatory dirty work.

The following story should not be particularly alarming, mainly because it is so typical and the responses oh so predictable--all grist for the conservative talk show mill, I suppose. The story revolves around a simmering fuss at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. W&M is our nation's second oldest university, dating from 1693. As one would imagine, the college is steeped in history. The gem of the campus is the Wren Chapel, dating from 1732. [I visited in 1998 and can attest to its beauty]. At issue is an 18" brass cross which has been on the altar there since 1940. It seems some students have taken offense. And with good reason--a cross! In a chapel, of all places! Imagine the horror of it all.

Gene K. Nichol, the school president, is sensitive to the tender sensibilities of the W&M student body. Indeed, he notes that since 2005, perhaps 20 people have mentioned to him their concerns about the brass cross. With such an overwhelming groundswell of opposition, what course could he take other than remove the cross? In October, he did that very thing "to make the chapel more welcoming to all faiths." He remarked that "it's the right thing to do to make sure this campus is open and welcoming to everyone...this is a diverse institution religiously, and we want it become even more diverse." But of course. And what better way than to remove the last remaining vestige, however faint, of the faith that both formed and has informed the university for most of his 313 years? Certainly, W&M is an elite institution that no longer caters to planters sons from along the Rappahannock. The international student body is indeed diverse, and I would doubt that a majority is even nominally Christian. But still, one can't help but be struck by the silliness of it all.

Some former students have rallied to protest the removal, and well-healed alumni have threatened to withhold funds. A spokesman for the group claims "it reflects a view that religious symbols --religion and the public expression thereof--are somehow an obstacle for us to get along with one another."

Nichol counters by asking "does that marvelous place belong to everyone, or is it principally for our Christian students...Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others."

I suppose the chapel could be converted to a cafeteria. Perhaps that would not be offensive. Of course, there could be no pork, and the other meat would have to be halal.

As one would expect, Nichol's decision was endorsed by the student assembly, most of the faculty and the Campus Ministers United. An Orthodox Jewish student from Israel complained that he was "uncomfortable" during Freshman orientation in the chapel. But now he feels "an integral part of the community due to this symbolic action." How lovely. And I'm sure Israeli colleges are equally accommodating to any non-Jewish students that come their way. Really.

Perhaps the opponents of the cross have inadvertently hit on something. In our country, the symbol has become little more than a piece of decorative art or a fashion accessory. When seen in this light, there could have been no ruckus at William and Mary. But maybe the Israeli student was right to feel "uncomfortable" in the same room as the cross. For the cross does not soothe and comfort. Rather, the cross, rightly seen, is unsettling. It is convicting. It pierces the soul and demands a declaration from us. And ultimately, it leads us to our redemption.

So, we'll see. Perhaps the alumni money will triumph over the diversity and dialogue crowd. But it will be a hollow victory. The problem here, it seems to me, is not those non-Christians who catch a sense of what the cross implies and oppose it. Rather, the true enemies are those useful idiots who, while giving lip service to Christianity, jettison the cross as a divisive and offensive symbol, to be sacrificed to the God of Diversity.

That Dang Old Enlightenment Again

Dr. David Bell, of Johns Hopkins, in a recent article here posits that we have over-reacted to the tragedy of 9/11. He makes a convincing case--one well worth reading--but what really interested me was his theory that this behavior is rooted in Enlightenment thought (I know, I know--we Orthodox blame the Enlightenment for everything.) He writes:

Seeing international conflict in apocalyptic terms — viewing every threat as existential — is hardly a uniquely American habit. To a certain degree, it is a universal human one. But it is also, more specifically, a Western one, which paradoxically has its origins in one of the most optimistic periods of human history: the 18th century Enlightenment.

Until this period, most people in the West took warfare for granted as an utterly unavoidable part of the social order. Western states fought constantly and devoted most of their disposable resources to this purpose; during the 1700s, no more than six or seven years passed without at least one major European power at war.

The Enlightenment, however, popularized the notion that war was a barbaric relic of mankind's infancy, an anachronism that should soon vanish from the Earth. Human societies, wrote the influential thinkers of the time, followed a common path of historical evolution from savage beginnings toward ever-greater levels of peaceful civilization, politeness and commercial exchange.

The unexpected consequence of this change was that those who considered themselves "enlightened," but who still thought they needed to go to war, found it hard to justify war as anything other than an apocalyptic struggle for survival against an irredeemably evil enemy. In such struggles, of course, there could be no reason to practice restraint or to treat the enemy as an honorable opponent.

Ever since, the enlightened dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of modern total war have been bound closely to each other in the West. Precisely when the Enlightenment hopes glowed most brightly, wars often took on an especially hideous character.

Bell concludes:

Yet as the comparison with the Soviet experience should remind us, the war against terrorism has not yet been much of a war at all, let alone a war to end all wars. It is a messy, difficult, long-term struggle against exceptionally dangerous criminals who actually like nothing better than being put on the same level of historical importance as Hitler — can you imagine a better recruiting tool? To fight them effectively, we need coolness, resolve and stamina. But we also need to overcome long habit and remind ourselves that not every enemy is in fact a threat to our existence.

The Ransom

For those interested in a comparison of the Orthodox vs. Western interpretation of the atonement, check out David Wooten's excellent article, Ransomed from Death, Saved by the Father's Love: A Meditation on the Work of Christ here. As he notes,

...the point is not, “Who uses the words of the apostles?” but rather, “Who means what the apostles meant?” Nowhere is this seen more clearly, in my opinion, than in the area of salvation most hotly contended by Evangelicals and Orthodox—that of the “ransom” of Christ....Was the ransom paid to an angry, offended God the Father, as some Evangelical groups would claim....Or was the ransom actually a destruction of the reality of Death, the very real enemy of humankind, as the Orthodox would state, thus allowing humans to see God...as He truly is, and not as our human passions would immediately have us believe?

Thanks, David.

Manifest Destiny: A New Direction for America

The article here by William Pfaff in The New York Review of Books offers one of the best insights into our current foreign policy debacle, and how we got there. Pfaff sees a "larger intellectual failure," indeed, a "national conceit" where "it is something like a national heresy to suggest that the United States does not have a unique moral status and role to play in the history of nations, and therefore in the affairs of the contemporary world. In fact it does not."

For years there has been little or no critical reexamination of how and why the limited, specific, and ultimately successful postwar American policy of "patient but firm and vigilant containment of Soviet expansionist tendencies...and pressure against the free institutions of the Western world" (as George Kennan formulated it at the time) has over six decades turned into a vast project for "ending tyranny in the world."

The Bush administration defends its pursuit of this unlikely goal by means of internationally illegal, unilateralist, and preemptive attacks on other countries, accompanied by arbitrary imprisonments and the practice of torture, and by making the claim that the United States possesses an exceptional status among nations that confers upon it special international responsibilities, and exceptional privileges in meeting those responsibilities.

Other excerpts, as follows:

quoting Thomas Paine: We are...as if we had lived in the beginning of time.

and Fukuyama: ...American economic and political policies today rest on an unearned claim to privilege, the American "belief in American exceptionalism that most non-Americans simply find not credible." Nor, he adds, is the claim tenable, since "it presupposes an extremely high level of competence" which the country does not demonstrate.[2]

and Michael Madelbaum: He describes the United States as already dominating the world, much as the elephant (in his genial comparison) dominates the African savanna: the calm herbivorous goliath that keeps the carnivores at a respectful distance, while supporting "a wide variety of other creatures—smaller mammals, birds and insects—by generating nourishment for them as it goes about the business of feeding itself."[6] Everyone knows the United States is not a predatory power, he says, so everyone profits from the stability the elephant provides, at American taxpayer expense.

Elephants are also known to trample people, uproot crops and gardens, topple trees and houses, and occasionally go mad (hence, "rogue nations"). Americans, moreover, are carnivores. The administration has attacked the existing international order by renouncing inconvenient treaties and conventions and reintroducing torture, and arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment, into advanced civilization. Where is the stability that Mandelbaum tells us has been provided by this American military and political deployment? The doomed and destructive war of choice in Iraq, continuing and mounting disorder in Afghanistan following another such war, war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as between Hamas and Fatah, accompanied by continuing crisis in Palestine, with rumbles of new American wars of choice with Iran or Syria, and the emergence of a nuclear North Korea —all demonstrate deep international instability.

And this from George Kennan's 1993 autobiography:

He did not think that democracy along North American and Western European lines can prevail internationally. "To have real self-government, a people must understand what that means, want it, and be willing to sacrifice for it." Many nondemocratic systems are inherently unstable. "But so what?" he asked. "We are not their keepers. We never will be." (He did not say that we might one day try to be.) He suggested that nondemocratic societies should be left "to be governed or misgoverned as habit and tradition may dictate, asking of their governing cliques only that they observe, in their bilateral relations with us and with the remainder of the world community, the minimum standards of civilized diplomatic intercourse."[8]

With the cold war over, Kennan saw no need for the continuing presence of American troops in Europe, and little need for them in Asia, subject to the security interests of Japan, allied to the United States by treaty. He deplored economic and military programs that existed in "so great a profusion and complexity that they escape the normal possibilities for official, not to mention private oversight." He asked why the United States was [in 1992] giving military assistance to forty-three African countries and twenty-two (of twenty-four) countries in Latin America. "Against whom are these weapons conceivably to be employed?... [Presumably] their neighbors or, in civil conflict, against themselves. Is it our business to prepare them for that?"

Pfaff concludes:

History does not offer nations permanent security, and when it seems to offer hegemonic domination this usually is only to take it away again, often in unpleasant ways. The United States was fortunate to enjoy relative isolation for as long as it did. The conviction of Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the country was exempt from the common fate has been succeeded in the twenty-first century by an American determination to fight (to "victory," as the President insists) against the conditions of existence history now actually does offer. It sets against them the consoling illusion that power will always prevail, despite the evidence that this is not true.

Schumpeter remarked in 1919 that imperialism necessarily carries the implication of

an aggressiveness, the true reasons for which do not lie in the aims which are temporarily being pursued...an aggressiveness for its own sake, as reflected in such terms as "hegemony," "world dominion," and so forth...expansion for the sake of expanding....

"This determination," he continues,

cannot be explained by any of the pretexts that bring it into action, by any of the aims for which it seems to be struggling at the time.... Such expansion is in a sense its own "object."

Perhaps this has come to apply in the American case, and we have gone beyond the belief in national exception to make an ideology of progress and universal leadership into our moral justification for a policy of simple power expansion. In that case we have entered into a logic of history that in the past has invariably ended in tragedy.

There's much to consider here.

King Michael

Nice interview with King Michael I of Romania, here.

This is Progress

The assassination of Hrant Dink has apparently jolted the Turkish nation. The outrage and the consequent national dialogue over this senseless killing exposes both the absurdity of their entrenched Armenian Genocide denial, as well as the infamous Penal Law #301. The funeral story, here.

Many who gathered held red carnations distributed by the local mayor’s office, or waved circular black and white placards reading “We are all Hrant Dink” in Turkish on one side and in Armenian on the other.

Other signs in the crowd read “Abolish 301,” a reference to the article of the Turkish penal law making it a crime to insult the state or Turkishness. Scores of intellectuals, including Mr. Dink and the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted under the article because of lawsuits brought by nationalists.

Tugrul Eryilmaz, 60, the features editor of the daily newspaper Radikal, was moved by the emotion and sweep of the march.

“Someone should have done this long ago,” he said. “We should have all reacted like this to Article 301, and to the killing of that priest in Trabzon. Well, better now than never.” (emphasis mine)

Another account, here, offers guarded optimism that this tragedy might help thaw relations between Turkey and Armenia.

Despite the fact that the Armenian-Turkish border has been sealed since 1993 and diplomatic relations severed, Armenia is sending a deputy foreign minister, Arman Kirakossian, to the funeral, and the archbishop of the Armenian Church of America, Khajag Barsamian, also accepted the government’s invitation to the ceremony.

Earlier, the Armenian defense minister, Serzh Sarkisyan, called for improved relations so that Armenia could “establish ties with Turkey with no preconditions,” the Turkish news channel NTV reported.

High-level Turkish government officials are expected to attend the funeral.

Turkey and Armenia have long been at odds over Turkey’s refusal to use the term “genocide” to describe the deaths of Armenians beginning in 1915. Many scholars and most Western governments say more than a million Armenians were killed in a campaign they describe as genocide. Turkey calls the loss of life a consequence of a war in which both sides suffered casualties, and has suggested that a group of envoys from each country analyze the history. Armenia has expressed a willingness to participate but insists that the border must first be reopened to trade.

Urban, cosmopolitan Istanbul has not always been particularly representative of Turkey in general. For that reason, it is encouraging to gauge reactions in other parts of the nation.

Most Armenian Turks live in Istanbul, the diverse and cosmopolitan center of Turkey. But the antinationalist demonstrations that followed Mr. Dink’s killing also surfaced in places as diverse as Izmir, the Aegean coastal city that is Turkey’s third largest, and in Sanliurfa and Hatay, which are close to Turkey’s eastern border with Syria.

“Public opinion in both countries, weary of the years-long conflict, had reached a point of explosion,” said Kaan Soyak, a director of the Turkish-Armenian Business Development Commission, the only bilateral trade council of Turkish and Armenian executives. “That’s what lies behind the massive outpouring for Mr. Dink.”

And finally, this may at last be the catalyst for the repeal of Penal Law #301, which makes it a crime to insult "Turkishness." By and large, the enforcement of the law is directed at those writers and intellectuals who have spoken the truth of the Armenian genocide.

Mr. Dink was a staunch defender of free speech and like other intellectuals was prosecuted for insulting “Turkishness” and sentenced to six months in jail, though his term was suspended.

Bulent Arinc, the parliamentary chairman from the ruling Justice and Development Party, said he would back efforts to abolish the measure under which Mr. Dink was prosecuted, known as Article 301.

“It can be discussed to totally abolish or completely revise the Article 301,” Mr. Arinc said, adding that members of Parliament “are open to this.”

I have been inclined towards pessimism with recent trends in Turkey. If what I read here is true, then real change may be in the offing: positive developments that could impact Armenia, the persecuted Greek Orthodox of Istanbul, and perhaps even the Cyprus question. We'll see.

Truth--Still at a Premium in Turkey

I was saddened to read today of the assassination of Hrant Dink, a noted Istanbul journalist (here, here). Frankly, I was unfamiliar with him until today's headlines. Of Armenian descent, Dink did that which can easily bring on a death sentence in Turkey--he spoke truth about the Armenian Genocide. The mayor and other government officials are saying all the right things, and there have been demonstrations against this outrage. It will be interesting to see how Turkish popular opinion reacts. I suspect Europe will be watching...closely.

Situation Hopeless, But Not Serious

I wish it didn't have to be this way. My perennial political disillusionment, that is. I recall being keenly interested in state and national politics since the age of 12. Taking this stuff seriously has set me up, time and again, for disappointment after disappointment.

First, there was Jimmy Carter. Lord, help us. I was a true believer at the time--my first presidential race as a young adult. It didn't take long. My idealism was no match for the unbridled naivete and sanctimony, the malaise, Iran, the killer rabbit and all that was the Carter administration. I emerged from the Carter years a pure cynic. Reagan was an exception. I started off opposed, but warmed up to him over the 8 years. By the end of Bush, Sr.'s administration, however, I was convinced that his re-election would condemn the Republican Party to a quick extinction. I cannot now remember exactly what irked me so about Bush, Sr., but I'm sure it had to be something significant. And then there was Clinton. There wasn't any great mystery, here. But still, I expected better.

This brings me to George W. I have defended him far longer than I should have. Perhaps it was because he was a somewhat decent governor of Texas, known as a concensus-builder. And then my defense mechanisms kicked in after the 2000 election brouhaha, when the Democrats opted for their tried and true "we was robbed" response. Cries of election-stealing from the party that wrote the book on this sort of thing was too much to take. I defended the President in the early years against the knee-jerk Bush-haters both here and abroad. I remember arguing with my Turkish friends who contended, on the one hand that Bush was an evil, conspiratorial mastermind, and on the other hand that he was a doofus. I said you can't have it both ways--he's either one or the other. Actually, I think he is neither. In the aftermath of 9/11, I appreciated his resolve. And I initially supported our effort against Iraq. I never believed the "weapons of mass destruction" bit, thinking that merely a ploy to gain international support. But at the time, I saw it as--if not absolutely necessary--then certainly an understandable move in our on-going confrontation.

I was wrong. And I was wrong about Bush. What appeared to be resolve is looking more and more like pure pig-headedness. And now a week after his national address, I am of the mind that he is indeed a dangerous president, one who is both out-of-touch and out-of-control. I fear that in his attempt to obfuscate the current debacle, he is seeking to widen it. Last week, Paul Krugman noted in his Quagmire of the Vanities article:

...I began writing about the Bush administration's infallibility complex, the president's Captain Queeg-like inability to own up to mistakes, almost a year before the invasion of Iraq. When you put a man like that in a position of power--the kind of position where he can punish people who tell him what he doesn't want to hear, and base policy decisions on the advice of people who play to his vanity--it's a recipe for disaster.

I know, I know...Krugman, Rich, Kristoff and the NYTimes are reliably, consistantly anti-Bush. But what about commentators that should be in his corner, or are at least not doctrinaire in their opposition?

George Will likens our situation not only to Vietnam, but to Stalingrad, here.

Or Georgie Anne Geyer, here. In my view, Geyer has always been a voice to listen to. She writes:

The president, far from taking any guidance from the anti-war November elections or polls, has used them as another stepping-stone to his imperial dreams. Far from heeding the report of the James Baker III/Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group, with its exacting equations, he seems to have used those 79 recommendations to decide what NOT to do....In short, having left the American people, the Democratic Congress, the Iraq Study Group and even his own generals behind him, President Bush strikes out alone on a strategy that, rather than making a smaller American footprint in the world, is making it immensely larger.

Geyer worries about signs of a widening conflict, from Somalia to Iran, and involving Israel.

The point is that, despite warnings from the American people through their vote, despite the urgent cries from our best bipartisan elites in the Iraq Study Group, and despite the advice of his own generals, President Bush is himself surging ahead, and let the cards fall where they may when this foolish game is over.

Meanwhile, moderate Arab countries in the area see a "nightmare scenario," according to even the pro-war Wall Street Journal, that would be a "much larger regional conflict that pits Sunnis against Shiites and could engulf the entire region, sparking a wider war in the middle of the world's largest oil patch." Their fear is seeing Iraq looking "less and less like a buffer between these two axes of Middle East power and more of a no-man's land that is bringing them into conflict."

So there is our post-election scenario for the next two years, bare of any of its civilizing foliage. Essentially, the same gang is there, doing the same gang-like things. The neocons lurk in the curtains off-stage, whispering to W. from the American Enterprise Institute that he must not be the man to "lose Iraq" and urging him on to Tehran. The generals speak out, but nobody listens. The Congress may be a hope -- we'll have to see.

But as for us, the people, I think we've got a pretty good idea now of what our leaders think of us.

Even Peggy Noonan, Reagan's speechwriter, is appalled. She writes, here:

What a dreadful mistake the president made when he stiff-armed the Iraq Study Group report, which had bipartisan membership, an air of mutual party investment, the imprimatur of what remains of or is understood as the American establishment, and was inherently moderate in its proposals: move diplomatically, adjust the way we pursue the mission, realize abrupt withdrawal would yield chaos. There were enough good ideas, anodyne suggestions and blurry recommendations (blurriness is not always bad in foreign affairs--confusion can buy time!) that I thought the administration would see it as a life raft. Instead they pushed it away....We don't always recognize deliverance when it arrives.

Right now, in the deepest levels of the American government, intelligence and military planners should be ordered to draw up serious plans for an American withdrawal, and serious strategies for dealing with the realities withdrawal will bring. It would not be the worst thing if the Maliki government knew those plans were being drawn up. It might concentrate the mind.

What is paramount is a hard, cold-eyed and even brutal look at America's interests. We have them. I'm not sure they've been given sufficient attention the past few years. In fact, I am sorry to say I believe they have not.

The Democrats--jockeying for 2008 position--have been quite vocal in expressing their opposition, but less forth-coming with alternatives. I think it remains for the Republicans to save George W.--and our soldiers--from himself. A few GOP Senators such as Chuck Hagel are attempting to do so. More power to them.

I continue to remember a line from one of my favorite movies, the 1962 Cold War relic "One, Two, Three." The erstwhile Communist trying to pass himself off as a Capitalist, mangles his lines and blurts out "situation hopeless, but not serious." For those like myself who allow themselves to fret about these things, the situation is indeed "hopeless." Fortunately, this is only the sideshow to what is really going on.

The Pentecostals

One of the more interesting articles in yesterdays’ NYTimes was A Sliver of a Storefront, A Faith on the Rise, the first in a 3-part story on the growth of Pentecostalism. The Times article targets a small storefront church in New York City, the Pentecostal Church Ark of Salvation for the New Millennium.

Though Pentecostalism, a strain of evangelical Christianity, was born a century ago in Kansas and is often associated with the stereotypical “holy rollers” of the Bible Belt, it has made deep inroads in Asia and Africa. In this hemisphere, its numbers and growth are strongest among Latinos in the United States and in Latin America, where it is eroding the traditional dominance of the Roman Catholic Church.

Experts believe there are roughly 400 million Pentecostals worldwide, and this year, the number in the city is expected to surpass 850,000 — about one in every 10 New Yorkers, one-third of them Hispanic. Precise numbers, however, are hard to come by because there are scores of denominations and no central governing body.

Here, in cramped storefronts like Ark of Salvation, people whose lives are as marginal as their neighborhoods discover a joyful intimacy often lacking in big churches. They find help — with the rent, child care or finding a job. As immigrants, they find their own language and music, as well as the acceptance and recognition that often elude them on the outside.

They find the discipline and drive to make a hard life livable.


This phenomenon intrigues me, as it is totally outside of my experience. My background was in the opposite direction (not with liturgical churches, certainly), but with a Protestant church that was heavy on reason, logic, and biblical exegesis and very light on emotion. And given such a background, I suppose I was as condescending and dismissive of the Pentecostals as the next guy. All that is in the past now, and I try to look at them in a new light, realizing that their worship may have been more pleasing to God than mine had been. That being said, I am now even farther removed from that approach and still maintain that they do not have the theological “legs” to stand for the long haul. Looking across nearly 2,000 years of Christian history, Pentecostalism is just a recent blip on the screen, and is not a new heresy, but rather a re-casting of old, familiar ones. But, the Pentecostal movement is vibrant and sweeping the Third World, perhaps the most significant factor in contemporary Christendom. Something is definitely going on here.

Barnabas Powell, a former Pentecostal and now Orthodox, hosts an excellent blog, Sober Joy. Beginning back on November 9th, he posted a 4 part series on Pentecostalism. Powell contends that the movement's growth "is a result of a theological poverty in Western Christianity." Citing this trend in both Catholicism and Protestantism, he believes it propelled a counter-reaction in the birth of the various Holiness movements, what he calls "the poor man's mysticism and...a clear cry for intimacy with God." For someone like myself--unversed in the specifics of Pentecostalism--Powell's series offers an excellent insight. See here, here, here and here.

MLK Day Thoughts

I have always respected Juan Williams, even more so after this interview in yesterday's Dallas Morning News. An excerpt follows:

Juan Williams has had it. The veteran black journalist – after a long career at The Washington Post, he joined National Public Radio and Fox News – has had it with aspects of black America that have failed to capitalize on the civil rights revolution. He's had it with a rap music culture that has become a "masturbatory fantasy."

He's had it with African-Americans who prefer to blame all their problems on racism instead of taking responsibility for their own lives. And he's most definitely had it with old-style black civil rights leaders, who in his view maintain their power by manipulating black anger and white guilt.

In his recent book, "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America – And What We Can Do About It", Mr. Williams delivers a strong – and highly controversial – challenge to black America. Mr. Williams, a civil rights historian and progressive pundit, brings his message to Dallas tomorrow night as the keynote speaker at a public symposium on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., sponsored by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Some Good Press

Two decent articles pertaining to the Orthodox Church have cropped up recently in the mainstream press. In the January 11th issue of USA Today, we find More Americans Join Orthodox Churches. Except for one major boner when they assert that "Orthodoxy was born from the Great Schism of 1054," the article is really not that bad, especially for such a topwater as USA Today. They even quote our friend Fr. Joseph Huneycutt, and give a plug for Orthodixie. Read it here.

And then Christianity Today (not always a friendly voice for Orthodoxy) posted an article by Bradley Nassif in recent weeks, entitled Will the 21st be the Orthodox Century? He begins by referencing Jaroslav Pelikan, always a good sign. Nassif, whether you agree with him or not, has interesting points to make. The entire article can be found here, and a few excerpts follow:

During the past two decades, mainline and evangelical scholars have rediscovered the creative relevance of the Christian East, with its insistence on the authority of the first 500 years of Christian teaching and practice....The problem with the usual Protestant approach to the Great Tradition, however, is the gaps and inconsistencies in retrieval efforts. To many, the Great Tradition is like a library, a place you go to pick out the books you find most helpful. You can discard the ones that no longer seem relevant, while choosing the ones that have proven to be of lasting value.

Simply put, I think more and more people will recognize the vital relationship between the major movements and themes of Christian antiquity and the organic life of the Eastern Orthodox Church from whence these themes came.

In two areas, especially, the Orthodox church has maintained its unbroken succession with Christian antiquity, and these areas are particularly attractive to an increasing number of Christians.

Scripture....whether they are aware of it or not, every time evangelicals pick up their Bibles, they are relying on the historic church's judgment on the colossal issue of canonicity! Without acknowledging it, evangelicals validate the authority of the Spirit-led tradition in determining canonicity. That same Spirit-led tradition has governed the Orthodox church over the centuries.

I believe an increasing number of people fascinated with the early church will see that the Spirit, the Bible, tradition, and real, historical, identifiable churches are inseparably united, then as now.

Historical continuity. I imagine that the deeper evangelicals delve into church history, the less they will confine the meaning of "orthodoxy" to the first 500 or 1,000 years. They will come to embrace the "whole story" of the faithful, not just the parts they personally like. …They will recognize that today's "rebirth of orthodoxy" cannot do justice to classical Christian faith without keeping it connected to the church that most fully produced and inherited its achievements.

Burnt Over Christianity

If you are not already a regular reader of Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog, Glory to God, then there is no better article to begin with than this one. A selection follows:

My contention was (and is) that the popular preaching of American Protestantism, had winnowed the gospel down to a few graphic images, easily preached and repeated. Those images were a caricature of the substitutionary atonement and a simplified version of Christian initiation (”accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior”) that came to be the stock of popular American evangelical preaching. Just think, American campuses were inundated with the “four” spiritual laws. Imagine trying to convey the Orthodox faith in four anything.

My further contention has been that what was once true of Upstate New York is now descriptive of an entire culture. America is the Burnt Over District. Most Americans, if they have heard a version of the gospel, have heard a very truncated, often caricatured version.

Problematic has been the dominance of an atonement metaphor (which is dogma for some) that portrays God as wrathful, vengeful and in need of appeasement. Often, at the heart of this image is an argument that God is “bound” by His justice and that His justice must be satisfied.

Bookmark his site. You will be blessed by doing so.

State of Denial

I am a little late in slogging through Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, as it was all the buzz back in September and October. I wasn't particularly eager to read the book, but felt as though I needed to do so. In his telling of the now-familiar story, Woodward proves too much, in my view, piling on anecdote after anecdote.

The work does confirm and solidify the popular perception of the major characters that has taken hold in the country. Bush is seen as well-meaning, but clueless, stubborn and worst of all, incurious. Cheney is, well, Cheney. Rumsfeld is an arrogant, tyrannical micro-manager. Rice is brilliant, loyal, but ultimately ineffectual. Powell is wise and insightful, but shut-out of the crucial decisions. One surprise is how out-of-the-loop Cheney appears to be once the Iraq war effort is churning along. When you start a war, they have a way of taking on a life of their own.

Another surprise was the long-term relationship between Saudi Prince Bandar and Bush. Theirs was a teacher-student relationship, with Bandar being a mentor of Bush from the onset of his Presidential itch. And in a book that is chock-full of outrages, what gave me pause was a relatively minor aside dealing with Bush's religious impulses and his relationship with the Saudis. A selection follows:

Whenever Bush saw or talked with the Crown Prince he referred to their shared, deep belief in God. The Crown Prince sent Bush a prayer, which the president told Bandar he used.

"This is the most precious thing I ever got," the president said.

Why take umbrage over this little item, of all things? I suppose this is a pet peeve of mine, and I tend to get a bit radical with it. Well, it is one thing to mouth public platitudes about how "we're all children of Abraham," and how the Muslim worships the God of Abraham just as Christians and Jews do--indeed, one has come to expect such talk. Such blather suffices for our ubiquitous "inter-faith dialogues" and such like. But it is altogether a different thing to actually believe it, as Bush apparently does. So, if I have this correct, Bush is fond of praying this Saudi prayer, a prayer sent him by the very Protector of Wahhabism. I'm sorry, but whoever equates the triune God with the Allah of Islam (that untidy mishmash of Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, paganism and tribal superstition)--well, that person has a thin grasp of either concept.

There, I've got the rant out of my system. I'll put up my soapbox now and return to being calm and collected. But it is worse than I ever imagined.

The Faith that Suffers

I appreciate the story by Fr. David Rucker in the recent OCMC newsletter. As the son of Methodist missionaries to China, he related the story of one of the persecuted house churches.

In a three-story house church in southern China...a Cantonese congregation...packed the unassuming structure from rafter to floor board. Every week they risked imprisonment by the communist authority and abandonment by their local community.... For a people without freedom, the hope these gatherings offered were far more valuable than the risk they cost....As David left that prominent Chinese house church, however, the head pastor, who himself had spent the past 17 years in and out of prison for his beliefs, took the opportunity to evangelize the evangelist. With a simple request, this devout man completely altered David’s perception of purpose, “Please, tell the people in America that we pray for them daily because they don’t have to suffer for their faith. It must be very difficult to be a Christian without suffering.”

For the whole story, read here.

As always, it's the small things

A recent encounter has been much on my mind. Due to the type of vehicle that I drive, I carry it to the dealership for all repairs. The only problem with this arrangement is that the dealership is 100 miles away, in Dallas. But hey, this is Texas. What's 100 miles? Anyway, a friend and co-worker was driving me there to pick up the vehicle, and I had promised him a steak dinner afterwards in appreciation.

Things went off without a hitch. I paid for the insanely expensive repairs with a swipe of the credit card. We then located a nearby steak house where we both ate very well. I am generally not one to eat much steak, but this seemed the generous and expansive thing to do. Anyway, the meal was delicious. Another swipe of the credit card paid the tab. As I was headed towards home, I pulled in to fill up the tank--again, all made possible with the magical card.

As I was pumping gas, a young man approached me. My defenses automatically went up. He wanted to know if he could ask me something. I mumbled something about not being from there. He then asked if I had any spare change I could give him. Again, I tried not to look at him and mumbled something about having only $5 on me and that it had to get me back home--100 miles away. (This part is true. I have taken off across 5 states with only $3 and some plastic in my pocket.) He turned and started walking off. I knew I had just blown it. I called out after him and said for him to wait and let me see what I could do. I opened my wallet and saw that I actually had $6 on me--a 5 and a 1. I pulled out the dollar and gave it to him. He thanked me and walked off.

If you look at such encounters as something of a test (and I definitely do), then I realized that I had just failed miserably. Almost any alternative would have been preferable to what I actually chose to do. I could have given him the $6 (it's not like there are no ATMs around). I could have given him the $5 instead of the $1. I could have been gracious in giving him the $1--which I was not. I could have said something--"God bless you"--anything. I just gave him the $1 and cut things off as soon as possible.

As I drove off, the chance encounter stayed with me, as did the words of Jesus from Matthew 25:31-46..that whole "least of these" thing. So, there is still a lot of work to do here. Maybe next time. Lord have mercy.