Because America

I visited Graceland when I was 19 years old, and that experience was so monumental, so mind-blowing, that I no longer felt the need to make pilgrimage anywhere else. (It took another 15 years and the careful study of Peter Guralnick's hefty two-volume Elvis Presley biography before I was able to let go of my obsession with the magnetic charms of the King.) Honestly, once you've gazed upon the Jungle Room, all the antiquities of the Ancient Near East have nothing to offer.

Despite my enduring dedication to Abraham Lincoln, that disinterest applies to Civil War sites as well. Maybe coming of age in Virginia, where you can't turn around without running into a battlefield marker, has something to do with that. However, I now have a reason, nay, a need, to journey to Gettysburg: the Civil Wars Tails at the Homestead Diorama Museum.

I know other nations have their fair share of quirky, obsessive personalities, but I am absolutely confident that none of them have a pair of sisters who create exquisitely detailed and perfectly scaled dioramas of Civil War battles in which all the combatants (wearing accurate uniforms) are cats. Cats.

Because America, people. Because America.

The case for reparations

Quite some time ago, I concluded, with Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, that the Lord has already determined, and wrought, the reparations owed for the years of American chattel slavery. Credit is owed to Ta-Nehisi Coates for accomplishing the near-impossible feat of making me reconsider an opinion with his Polk-prize-winning 2014 essay, "The Case for Reparations." He powerfully demonstrates that systematic oppression of African-Americans continued long past the formal end of chattel slavery, effectively countering my assumptions regarding that for which African-Americans might be owed reparation. It's a long read, but Coates' arguments are thoughtful and deserve thoughtful engagement.

What reparations, then? How might they be gathered, administered, and distributed? Is money even the issue? At the end of section IX, Coates writes,

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Amen.

But how to effect such a spiritual renewal? Nate DiMeo, creator and producer of the elegant and wonderful The Memory Palace, has a suggestion in "Notes on an Imagined Plaque to be Added to the Statue of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Upon Hearing that the Memphis City Counci has Voted to Move it and the Exhumed Remains of General Forrest and his Wife, Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, from their Current Location in a Park Downtown, to the Nearby Elmwood Cemetery." DiMeo and Coates agree that in order for our nation to truly change, we must first become historically aware.

But that, in turn, must be a spiritual renewal. Our nation must want to become historically aware, to know its sins in order to make amends for them. Those who want to know their sins are those who want to repent of them because they long to lay them at the foot of the Cross of Christ.

Both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nate DiMeo speak eloquently of the persistent and evil problem of race relations in these United States. Perhaps unwittingly, the case they make is, ultimately, a case for the preaching of the Gospel.

The Great Interpreter

In a powerful argument for Abraham Lincoln as a strict constructionist whose interpretation of the Constitution has become the standard one in these United States, Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen advance another provocative thesis: Lincoln's de facto repudiation of the Dred Scott decision, through executive action, demonstrates that other branches of the federal government, equally bound to defend the Constitution, cannot be held to illegitimate interpretations offered by the Supreme Court.

Provocative and, in light of recent history, well worth pondering.

Is Darryl Hart serious?

Darryl G. Hart is a Church and American religious historian (yes, those are two distinct categories), and a ruling elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I've read several of his books and attended some of his lectures, mostly of a historical and sociological bent, and am rather appreciative of his lonely quest to ground Christian identity in the marks of the visible Church rather than the ineffable experiences in which most American baptists and evangelicals try to root their assurance of salvation. As sympathetic readers of this blog know, it's a quixotic endeavor, and in much of his scholarly work I find Hart a supportive voice in the campaign to restore the visible Church to her God-ordained primacy.

However.

Some years ago now, I heard an interview in which a political thinker of some note (no, I can't remember who it was) was asked what he thought of something Ann Coulter had recently said. After a moment of sincere hesitation, he responded to the effect that he considered Ann Coulter a performance artist, not a political analyst; and since he didn't think she believed what she said, he didn't feel any obligation to refect on her words either. I think much the same thing when I read Darryl Hart on the relationship of Church and state or of Christian to these United States. There's a serious philosophy in there, but he demands a consistency and purity which seems to me utterly disconnected from the world in which we live.

While I am accordingly dubious of much which appears on his blog, this month I was driven to jaw-dropping astonishment by his review of Richard Gamble's In Search of the City on the Hill, which appears in the current Ordained Servant. I haven't read Gamble's book, which explores the ways in which a metaphor Jesus deployed in the Sermon on the Mount to describe his disciples and the Church was appropriated into American political rhetoric. An interesting topic, that, and perhaps Gamble succeeds in even-handedness and nuance. Hart does not. His stance becomes a self-defeating posture in the final paragraph of his review (commas supplied by my compulsion to line-edit):

Far too often Christians in the United States have let partisan politics obscure their higher commitment to Scripture. That is why evangelical Protestants, for instance, overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates who, despite the misuse of biblical language, appeared to be defending traditional American ideals. Of course, as Gamble shows, those ideals were not Jesus’s or Winthrop’s. But patriotism proved to be a more forceful influence than Scripture’s own teaching.

Re-read that paragraph if you like (I certainly have), or go read it in its original context. Hart seems to suggest that evangelicals who vote for candidates who defend traditional American ideals are somehow betraying Scriptural ideals. Wait: really? Writing as someone who chooses to vote for fringe candidates rather than compromise my (admittedly idiosyncratic and unspeakably lofty) principles, I nonetheless understand why other Christians make a different choice. If one believes the best way forward is to participate in the system as it currently operates, perhaps in the hope of gradual reformation towards more genuinely constitutional principles, that's a legitimate choice which, in itself, doesn't compromise one's allegiance to Christ's Lordship (at least so far as I can tell). Given that prior choice, why wouldn't a Christian vote for candidates who appear to defend traditional American values, not to mention what was once the consensus moral position in our national culture?

With (I am given to understand) Richard Gamble, Hart appears shocked, shocked, that 20th century politicians would appropriate a Biblical metaphor and Christians not rise up in furious umbrage. Now, I hate to point this out to historians, but America is an English-speaking country, and the two greatest influences on all educated discourse amongst English-speaking peoples are Shakespeare and the King James Bible. As a high-Church presbyterian, I believe only the Church is the city on the hill in the way Jesus meant that metaphor. As an American devoted to the propositions on which this nation was founded, I in all sincerity believe these United States are also a city on a hill and a light to the nations, but in a way quite different from the way in which the Church is. If I can believe both of those things, then a man of Hart's learning and education ought at least to understand that such a reconciliation of beliefs is possible, and that one can think of America as a city on a hill without being a blinkered idiot who has abandoned all commitment to Biblical principle in the public sphere.

Darryl Hart has some interesting points to make about the way Christians conceive of their role in the political arena. Perhaps if he presented them with more nuance and seriousness, those points would be taken seriously.

What Would Lincoln Do?

Somebody at Time no doubt thought themselves very clever for having put that question on the cover last week. (Perhaps not surprisingly, it wasn't answered between the covers; as the brief discussion of Lincoln was merely a pretext to run a fawning piece on Daniel Day-Lewis, the cover which appeared in the rest of the world would have been more honest. Who knew that shouting all one's lines makes one a great actor? Other than Sean Penn, I mean.)

However, I actually ask that question with some frequency. Ma Curmudgeon once told me it's unreasonable to expect every politician to be Abraham Lincoln, but I don't know why. Lincoln's greatness was abetted by his savvy political instincts and an astonishing mastery of American rhetorical craftsmanship, but it was grounded in a clear understanding of the American experiment in maintaining civil liberties through representative government, as articulated by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. For all their elegance and eloquence, neither of those documents is particularly hard to understand. In that sense, in comprehending and furthering just what this country is all about, anyone could have Lincoln's clarity of vision and purpose. And frankly, anyone running for national office should.

I voted on Tuesday, instead of waiting for Election Day, mostly to put myself out of my misery. I didn't listen to the presidential debates because I'm working on not screaming at the radio so much, and I expect that I'll also take a pass on the victory speech delivered by whoever. I'll wager two things about that speech, though: it will make reference to Lincoln and/or his words, and will reflect a complete inability to grasp his understanding of this great country of ours.

Getting the late unpleasantness right

As annoying, mawkish, and just plain weird as the weeping Abraham Lincoln cover of last week's Time magazine was, the actual cover story, "Why We're Still Fighting the Civil War," was actually illuminating and helpful. It tracks the history of interpretation of the War of the Rebellion, shows the origins of the war over slavery in the territories (particularly Kansas), demonstrates the origins of Confederacy apologetics, presents the current-day scholarly consensus (giving due to the contributions of John Hope Franklin and other mid-20th century African American historians), and properly presents the justifiers of secessionism who claim anything other than slavery caused the Civil War as the fringe group they are. Members of said fringe will not be persuaded, of course, but as the text of the Declaration of Independence hasn't gotten through to them yet, that's hardly a criticism.

All in all, an unusually good showing for Time. And then they published this week's cover story...

Mr. Breyer Writes a Dissenting Opinion

Hadley Arkes offers this subtle, penetrating, and historically informed analysis of a recent dissenting opinion from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer on a 2nd Amendment case, bringing the justice's reasoning to bear on the question of federal jurisdiction over abortion law.

An Almost-Chosen People

To Mrs. Curmudgeon's bemusement, I am an obsessive listener of the EconTalk podcast, and have picked up the phrase "deep insight" from host Russ Roberts. Paul Johnson's lecture "An Almost-Chosen People," published in the June/July 2006 issue of First Things, is littered with them. Just one paragraph (get ye and read the rest):

"Since religious establishments were popular rather than hieratic, a distinctive American religious tradition began to emerge. There was never any sense of division in law between laity and clergy, between those with spiritual privileges and those without—no jealous confrontation between a secular and an ecclesiastical world. America was born Protestant and did not have to become so through revolt and struggle. It was not built on the remains of a Catholic Church or an establishment; it had no clericalism or anticlericalism. In all these respects it differed profoundly from the old world, which had been shaped by Augustinian principles and violent reaction to them. The word secular never had the same significance in America as in Europe because the word clerical had never conveyed an image of intolerance and privilege. America had a traditionless tradition, making a fresh start with a set of Protestant assumptions, taken for granted, self-evident, as the basis for a common national creed."

Lincoln & Darwin

I heard on February 12 that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day 200 years ago. The amateur cultural observer cannot help wonder, then, which has proven more important. An obvious case can be made for Darwin; evolutionary theory everywhere dominates the hard and social sciences. Moreover, it has allowed materialism of all forms to claim legitimacy, and therefore to deny the Creator's claims over his creation.

For all that, my choice is still Lincoln. Without Lincoln, historical circumstances would very likely have led to the rebellion of the Southern States, but without Lincoln, it's very difficult to envision how the Union would have been preserved from its darkest hour. And as Lincoln observed in the Gettysburg Address, without the Union to embody the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence, they would have become discredited and lost as a practical basis for governance.

In other words, Lincoln is more important than Darwin because all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Scriptural echoes in the Gettysburg Address

Peter Leithart posted this interesting suggestion regarding Lincoln's use of Biblical language in the Gettysburg Address: http://www.leithart.com/2008/05/19/american-adam/.

My sad obsessions

  As all right-thinking people agree, Abraham Lincoln was the greatest rhetorician in American history, saving the Union with words alone.  (Okay, and the Union war machine.)  And as anyone who survived the 80s would agree, t-shirts are the finest vehicle available for communicating important philosophical concepts to one's community.  

  Now the fine folks at woot.com have pressed all my buttons with this portrait of Lincoln rendered in the text of the Gettysbury Address.  So tell me that you love me for only $15 by going to http://shirt.woot.com/Friends.aspx?k=5229.

The Judgments of the Lord

If National Public Radio is a reliable barometer of culture, the question of reparations to descendants of slaves continues to be a hot debate amongst our nation’s intelligentsia. The argument for reparations goes something like this: African-Americans, as a class of persons, were set back economically and socially by chattel slavery. The descendants of slaves, therefore, should receive a financial settlement which would enable them to attain the status they might otherwise have had. The argument against points out the near-impossibility of determining who ought to pay whom, and questions the obligation of the current generation to pay for crimes in which they had no part.

In formulating a response, let us make several stipulations.
 1) Chattel slavery, as practiced in the United States of old and around the world today, is the Biblical sin of man-stealing (Deuteronomy 24:7), and therefore a crime worthy of criminal and civil punishment.
 2) Reparation is a Biblically appropriate punishment for theft (Exodus 22:1).
 3) Paying financial reparations to descendants of slaves today would almost certainly create new injustices, not least that of visiting the sins of the father on the son (Ezekiel 18). What, then, ought we as a nation do? Abraham Lincoln addressed the issue in his Second Inaugural Address:

…The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope- fervently do we pray- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God will that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”

According to President Lincoln, reparations have already been exacted by the Lord through the terrible war he visited on these United States. Why have his words been ignored in the current debate? Because those who argue for reparations, indeed, because even we Presbyterians who confess God’s sovereignty over history, have forgotten that the God who poured out His wrath on his Son in space and time in order to redeem His beloved people also visits His righteous judgments upon sinners in space and time. He has done so since He laid the foundations of the world, and will do so until and on the Last Day. When we forget this, we begin worrying, fretting justice will not be done, sin never be redressed. We act as though God does not exist, and we must do His work ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln understood history is theocentric. The Lord of the heavens is Lord of history, working all events to his good purposes. He calls us to see His hand at work in the world, and not only to be content, but to rejoice in all He has done. “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” (Psalm 19:9)