∞
Steal It Back
The always-thoughtful Alastair Roberts asks:
In light of the ignominious behaviour of leading ‘evangelical’ voices in supporting and standing by Donald Trump, I have a question for my American friends who haven’t compromised on this point. At what point should the self-designation ‘evangelical’ be abandoned? At what point do the liabilities of the term outweigh its potential benefits? At what point does the meaning of a term need to be so hedged with qualifications and distinctions that it ceases to be fit for purpose?Roberts concludes that the term should be retired: “We need to shift the weight of our identity and our labours away from the mass movement and back towards the church and the task of forming a healthy and well-defined public.” In one sense, he’s right: evangelicalism has traditionally been a renewal movement within existing denominations or traditions, not something that stands on its own outside those traditions, and I think it works best that way. Evangelicalism at its best sees how the Christian traditions tend to lose their focus and their fire; it strives to bring Christians within whatever tradition to a new intensity of focus, a new fire of faith.
But to say that is to say that the term “evangelical” needs to be re-situated, not that it needs to be abandoned. I find myself remembering that moment in Rattle and Hum when Bono introduces “Helter Skelter” by saying, “Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.” It’s time to steal “evangelical” back.
Who should steal it?
- Those who believe that renewal among Christians is necessary
- Those who believe that such renewal is difficult
- Those who believe that such renewal is costly
- Those who believe that the power to be renewed comes only from the Trinitarian God
- Those who believe that that power of renewal is primarily and always to be sought through what John Wesley called the “the ordinary channels of conveying God’s grace into the souls of men,” as identified in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” In Wesley’s formulation, “First, all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the way of prayer.... Secondly, all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in searching the Scriptures.... Thirdly, all who desire an increase of the grace of God are to wait for it in partaking of the Lord's Supper.”
- Those who can discern the resources within their own denominational traditions to pursue these tasks
- Those who think God is happy with them just as they are
- Those who turn to God for material prosperity in preference to intimacy with God and charity towards their neighbors
- Those whose minds are formed not by “searching the Scriptures” but by television, talk radio, and Twitter
- Put “searching the Scriptures” at the heart of congregational preaching — and singing (which requires, among other things, immediately eliminating all praise songs that are not thoroughly scriptural and restoring the place of hymns that offer a sophisticated interweaving of biblical texts: nothing teaches Christians how the various parts of the Bible interrelate better than the great hymns)
- Rigorously and patiently teach people the various disciplines of public and private prayer (Adoration, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving, Lamentation)
- Regularly and reverently celebrate the Lord’s Supper
Don’t abandon “evangelical.” Steal it back.
∞
Douglas Coupland: ‘I’m actually at my happiest when I’m writing on a plane’
Douglas Coupland: ‘I’m actually at my happiest when I’m writing on a plane’
If you told me I had to write the way that Coupland now writes, I’d give it up. You’d never hear another word from me.
∞
Yet the author of The Age of Anxiety and the author of The Gutenberg Galaxy turn out to have more in common than their conflict might suggest. Both in their 60s by the time of this discussion (“Thank God I can remember the world before World War I,” says the poet) and both 1930s converts to Catholicism…— Marshall McLuhan, W.H. Auden & Buckminster Fuller Debate the Virtues of Modern Technology & Media (1971) | Open Culture. That would be — what’s the word? — wrong.
∞
I find it amusing to reflect on the idea that mankind may sometime soon grow tired of reading and that writers will do so too, that the scholar will one day direct in his last will and testament that his corpse shall be buried surrounded by his books and especially by his own writings. And if it is true that the forests are going to get thinner and thinner, may the time not come one day when the libraries should be used for timber, straw and brushwood? Since most books are born out of smoke and vapour of the brain, they ought to return to smoke and vapour. And if they have no fire of their own in them, fire should punish them for it.
Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator”
∞
The education of German youth, however, proceeds from precisely this false and unfruitful conception ofculture: its goal, viewed in its essence, is not at all the free cultivated man but the scholar, the man of science, and indeed the most speedily employable man of science, who stands aside from life so as to know it unobstructedly; its result, observed empirically, is the historical-aesthetic cultural philistine, the precocious and up-to-the-minute babbler about state, church and art, the man who appreciates everything, the insatiable stomach which nonetheless does not know what honest hunger and thirst are. That an education with this goal and this result is an anti-natural one is apprehensible only to one who has not yet been fully processed by it; it is apprehensible only to the instinct of youth, for youth still possesses that instinct of nature which remains intact until artificially and forcibly shattered by this education.
— Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”
∞
Betrayed by Our Leaders: A Young Conservative Responds to Endorsements of Donald Trump
Betrayed by Our Leaders: A Young Conservative Responds to Endorsements of Donald Trump
I think what Peters says here is basically correct, but I don’t think he has identified the key issues in relation to First Things, as opposed to ISI or Claremont. The latter are institutions defined politically, and while many people associated with them are religious believers, they need not be. But FT is a journal dedicated to the relationship between religion and public life — that’s it’s whole reason for being. So when I read post after post by Rusty Reno and Mark Bauerlein defending Trump — or criticizing people who attack Trump — that don’t mention Christianity, or even religion more broadly, I find myself thinking: Man, we could really use a journal of religion and public life right about now.
∞
[gallery] pupdesign:
Today we say goodbye to the eminent graphic designer, Elaine Lustig Cohen (1927-2016). Her website provides a fitting description:A high point of book publishing of the 1950s and 60s, Elaine’s typographic, abstract and photographic book jacket designs are a unique style of American modernism characterized by inventiveness and clarity.Thank you, Elaine, for showing us how to speak visually, boldly, concisely.
∞
[gallery] alphonsopeluso:
My @IITArchitecture Advanced Modeling student’s 3D prints. The theme was ‘Effects’.