Saturday, July 25th, 2009
This morning, I was reading Peggy Noonan's article on Sarah Palin, and it occurred to me that this was the photographic negative of another account I had read recently. Noonan, a Republican, thinks that Palin was out of her depth in a shallow pool. On the other side, Camille Paglia, a Democrat, thinks that the media have greatly underestimated her intelligence.
For Noonan, see here.
For Paglia, see here and here (Palin coverage on second page).
To some degree, I think these treatments compliment each other. Paglia will defend Palin's use of language, and suggest that she might be able to study up and be ready in eight years. Noonan will attack Palin's lack of interest in other people's views and suggest that this cramming session is unlikely to take place.
What I find more interesting than their disagreements as to the value of Palin, though, is their differing views as to what kind of persona they would be seeking. They both agree that they want someone thoughtful who can take in the vastness of the world and be sympathetic to very different kinds of people. But Noonan would like a cooler candidate. Paglia likes the rough and tumble verbal sparring of a Palin even if its edginess seems out of place to some. Paglia often likens her to an Amazon warrior, a comparison which comes up when a woman's energy comes across as a force of nature.
The clearest disagreement I see between Noonan and Paglia is the role the assign to the elite in Palin's candidacy. For Paglia, "She's no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she's pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite -- which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend." For Noonan, "It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon."
4:19 am Pacific Standard Time
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Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Did you ever have a hymn not work for you? Did you find that you didn't resonate with what it was saying? Or worse yet, you couldn't figure out why anybody would be singing those words in the first place?
I first noticed this in childhood. The song I especially remember was "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." The thing exasperated me. It probably didn't help that I thought the first line was "Michael, Row the Butter Shore." (I could imagine reeds sticking out of butter and what it would look like when the oar scraped through reeds and butter together.) But even later when I got some of the words, I couldn't figure out why the song would be sung. Some songs worshipped God. In other contexts, some songs told a fun story. I could understand a praise song. I could understand "Puff, the Magic Dragon." But what was "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" about? I also kind of hated his sister. I imagined she was trimming the sail with scissors before they set out. I could imagine the adults saying how helpful sister was. I always hated how some compliant girl always got attention for this kind of helpfulness. And here we were singing about it in church. Yuck. I would have been happy to see her cut herself with those scissors.
As time wore on, I came to understand the lyrics, and still had a problem with the point. I still think it is a perfect example of a song that doesn't do anything helpful. Perhaps it delights some similarly to how "Puff, the Magic Dragon" might, with enjoyable images. If so then it has one virtue. One that was entirely lost on me.
Later, I remember on a Minnesota visit going to my grandmother's Lutheran church. From what I can tell from their website, they have not been affiliated with any Lutheran body for a long time. But the background was Finnish pietism. One of the hymns was "What a friend we have in Jesus." This one was a bit different. I really liked the first verse. This was long before I had ever heard of him, but I had a Garrison Keillor Lutheran church moment. But then what was going on in the later verses? "Do thy friends despise, forsake, thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer." Hmmmm. Written out, it sounds like good advice. Though I myself would not tend to call them friends once they have done this, so I would write it differently. But I can still follow it. But given the tone of the hymn, there was a "yuck" factor. There was a picture of a kind of consolation that just seemed out of place. Now the New Testament does offer consolation for rejection. The Sermon on the Mount talks about counting this as joy because people treated the prophets so before us. But really. The hymn is mostly sung by those raised in the church. Those whose friends know they are Christians already. The line doesn't carry the same tone as the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount, challenging as it is, is not off-putting in the same way as this line of the hymn. If someone has gotten real consolation from the hymn, then I'll stand corrected. But I never liked it. I tried to picture my grandmother singing this verse and meaning it, and the picture was just bizarre.
I was happy when I learned that one thing that made a hymn orthodox was objectivity. That it was not first and foremost about us. Hearing that, I could see some of what bothered me about certain songs I had sung in worship before. They were not about God and what He had accomplished. The worst ones weren't even really about us. They were about those we might be like, though often with lower motives intact. Sometimes the tone was wrong in the words. Sometimes you could even hear it in the music itself. This is a difficult thing to do well. To marry text to tune. A good text and a good tune can even come together in a bad marriage. Or hit a rocky patch in one or another verse.
In the modern worship wars, I tend to lean strongly in the direction of the hymnal. But I don't find that the hymnal itself is a guarantee of goodness. Certain modern writers do better than certain older writers at avoiding common problems. (Though I can say that LSB did a fine job of chopping out lots of the bad ones.) And we can probably get more people on board in the long run if we can teach the criteria of a good worship song.
6:03 am Pacific Standard Time
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Monday, July 20th, 2009
Having been around different ecclesiastical communities, I have noticed that once bodies are separated for some time, there are often areas of development within them that are not directly related to the original doctrinal distinctives which separate them from each other. I think this matter has received scant attention.
Moving into the LCMS from the PC(USA) introduced me to a different kind of ecclesial world. Some of these differences were chosen ones. I wanted to be in a congregation that believed in and acted like it believed in the Real Presence. Others differences were more subtle and not as directly related to the doctrine. Clergy and laity interacted quite differently. Some of this seemed to be due to different views of the Office of the Ministry. Others seemed to be due to German culture and what leadership meant.
But I have further seen that there are developments in other communities that are really not engaged. I took a course at Gordon-Conwell called Old Testament Hermeneutics from the late Dr. Meredith Kline. He was perhaps the top covenant theologian in the world. Now this brand of theology has a Reformed background. In the early days, from what I read, I can see why the Lutherans had little to do with it. On the other hand, over the years the refinements seem to have brought it more in line with key insights of the Protestant Reformation. At its best it ties monergism to the use of means. When I see Lutheran theologians mention covenant theology at all, it is generally of the earliest varieties that were abandoned long ago. I have at best seen passing mention of what we do in contrast. Perhaps this makes some sense. Different doctrinal systems solve problems in different ways. Every system does not develop each Biblical motif to its fullest development. Choices have to be made. And when an early version of a development seems out of place in a system, it is unlikely to be revisited in its later forms. Though it is to be wished that they would be represented correctly when discussed.
Then there are all the developments in the evangelical world. Each new generation brings new winds of doctrine. The evangelical world is a very "windy" world as far as these go. The laymen are zealous in a way Lutheran laymen often are not. The good side of this is that they self-educate. The bad side of this is that the self-education is often lop-sided. Where a pastor can guide it without crushing it, I think it is a fine thing.
One of these movements from (I believe) the 1970's was Ray Stedman's Bodylife idea, described in a book by the same title. The idea behind this has to do with allowing parishioners to minister to each other's needs on a regular basis. For some Lutherans, this conception of "ministry" is wrong-headed from the start. The Holy Ministry is what people need. Further, if they are to serve each other, vocation is how they should do so. I am still wrestling with this idea. Doctrinally, I think the Lutheran position is on solid ground, in the main. But we do have a category for parishioners to engage each other in what our confessions call the "mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren" (SA III IV). And the church meetings described in 1 Corinthians 12-14 do seem to have some time open for more than a clergyman to be acting. I think we have allowed this conversation to be considered concluded when we should consider it to be at an early stage.
Any thoughts on this one? Either the model of ministry, or the broader question of how to evaluate doctrinal developments from other church bodies?
5:09 am Pacific Standard Time
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Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
I've been watching the hearings this morning. I had missed most of yesterday's coverage. I just wanted to note a few observations.
The woman is intelligent, and has quite a presence.
When grilled on hot-button propositions she has been very wily. She has given careful legalistic answers that make it sound as if she will decide very mechanically. So she can manage to avoid answering difficult questions and at the same time pose as being cool and objective.
Yet now Senator Kyl is quoting her sounding a lot less cool and objective. Sotomayor was quoted from a lecture where she said, "Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
This has been interesting on two counts. First, when speaking more frankly, Sotomayor believes that life experiences affect judging. But second, when I read her actual words for myself, rather than snippets taken out of context, this is nuanced enough that I may actually agree with her on the smaller point. I think this aspect of her history may be a plus for certain kinds of cases. It is her leftward leanings that bother me. And her dismissal of objectivity in the earlier part of her speech was a point Jon Kyl honed in on—and for good reason. It may be that there is a good way to understand this. But she owes it to us to explain it candidly.
As to the Second Amendment, it sounds as if Sotomayor may have to recuse herself if a particular case which she authored is reviewed by the Supreme Court. In that case, the court will actually be further to the right for that case if she takes the seat.
5:40 am Pacific Standard Time
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Monday, July 13th, 2009
"A dyed-in-the-wool Reformed churchman, who really holds to the faith of his church, enters an ecclesistical world which is alien to him when he steps into the cathedrals of Lübeck and Roeskilde, in Drontheim and Uppsala (A video of the bell can be found here.) . He is disturbed by the altars, which remind him of the "idolatry" of the Mass, and by the crucifixes and pictures which, in his eyes, vilate the Second Commandment. These things offend him, just as they offended his ancestors who once "purged" the cathedrals in Switzerland and, smashing the great cruxifix of the Berlin Cathedral, hurled it into the Spree. Just as those Reformed people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were scandalized by the Matins and Vespers in the Lutheran churches of Germany, by the observance of the Canonical Hours in the old collegiate churches, by the solemn Masses in the great city churches with their Nicene Creed intoned in Latin and with Latin Prefaces, by the hymns and sequences for saints' days, by the vestments, incense (in the Magdeburg Cathedral, for example), and sanctuary lamps (the last of which to be extinguished recently in Lutheran Germany being that in St. Sebald's in Nuremberg), so, today, the Reformed Christian is still scandalized by the whole worship of our church because it is not sufficiently 'reformed'."
[from Here We Stand: The Nature and Character of Lutheranism by Hermann Sasse, p.98.]
Note: While YouTube offers a wonderful opportunity to provide video of what is mentioned, those who filmed had their own personal motivations for filming. I sometimes had to choose between quality and subject matter. If others find footage that expresses better what Sasse is speaking of, feel free to comment.
10:57 am Pacific Standard Time
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Friday, July 10th, 2009
Some years back I was in a bookstore looking at the Patrick O'Brian sea novels. They were very attractive. What if I would enjoy the twenty volumes? Wouldn't that be fun! I chose one off the shelf and read ten random pages to see if anything grabbed me. Thud. No resonance. Yet when the movie came out, I was inspired to buy the first book and I gave it a try or two and didn't get anywhere. But then a friend recommended them whose reading tastes seemed to be very similar to mine (e.g. East of Eden, Herman Wouk's WWII novels), and that made me resolve to try them again some time. Well, some time was the Fourth of July. Plans had fallen through due to the illness of my hosts, and I turned down a second invitation because it was a long drive and I had lots of Sunday duties at church.
Evening rolled around and I was 60 pages into the book, and loving it. It was worth having an otherwise disappointing day to discover this. As soon as I pushed a few pages beyond where I had gotten before, I realized what O'Brian was up to. And as the reading progressed, I developed a strong trust that he knew how to inundate the reader with unfamiliar nautical terminology without allowing the story to be lost in the midst. Now I will pick up the book and read perhaps the first ten pages of the session looking up many words, and then go on to read without doing the research. It is just fine.
For looking things up, I found my Random House dictionary includes naval terminology to a degree that surprises me. (Thank you, UCI, for requiring this of students in the Humanities Core Course.) But some of the definitions have led me astray. I found this Sailor's Word book at GoogleBooks, and it makes distinctions between terms as used by the American and Royal navies. Compare the definition it gives for "sloop" against your own dictionary to see how this could be helpful. Stephen Maturin would have loved such a book.
Now, I'm reading Master and Commander after having just finished Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, which was a page-turner, but rather stretched plausibility past the breaking point. O'Brian is delightfully realistic coming on the heels, or should I say, in the wake, of that. That these men speak as they would have in their time, and think as they would have in their time, makes the book rich. I am sick of costume drama movies which are outwardly authentic but have people speak as they would not have spoken before my college years, let alone my lifetime.
As my friend explained, what really makes the books work is the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey and physician Stephen Maturin. The movie was well cast as far as the chemistry goes. (Though in the book Jack is called Goldilocks on the ship because of his long gold hair.) Half the time I think I AM Stephen Maturin. In outlook he is a good match. Though in temperament I relate to Jack's jovial nature better. (I probably alternate between jovial and mercurial in this, though.) This primary identification with one character alongside a strong identification on another point with the other character makes the book very interesting to me. I find myself in this position with actual friends quite a bit.
4:09 am Pacific Standard Time
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