Civil Commotion

I pointed last week toward a piece in Harpers by Alan Jacobs, The Watchmen: What became of the Christian intellectuals?, which has been the subject of a lot of online discussion. Basically, Jacobs mourns the passage of a significant Christian influence in public thought, the lack of theologians who are household names and regularly consulted on public matters of consequence.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that Albert Mohler has something to say about that.

My larger concern with Professor Jacobs’s thoughtful article, however, has to do with the Protestant examples he cites. We might call this our “Where Are Our Reinhold Niebuhr and C. S. Lewis Problem.”

[ … ]

In the modern age, those who are intellectually aware “do not believe in the virgin birth, and we have difficulty with the physical resurrection of Christ.” Further: “We do not believe, in other words, that revelatory events validate themselves by a divine break-through in the natural order.” A “divine break-though in the natural order,” we must note, is the heart of the Christian truth claim.

His worldview was clear: “The accumulated evidence of the natural sciences convinces us that the realm of natural causation is more closed, and less subject to divine intervention, than the biblical world view assumes.”

That is not to depart from biblical Christianity “at one important point.” That is to abandon the heart of biblical Christianity.

Niebuhr’s strategy, historian George Marsden explains, was to “reserve a place in modern culture for what he regarded as the essence of the Christian faith, a place that would be safe from the onslaughts of scientific naturalism. This “essence of the Christian faith” was Christianity stripped of its essential supernatural elements.

[ … ]

Where is our Reinhold Niebuhr? We had better be careful what we ask for.

I am reminded of Eric Hoffer’s famous observation that mystery is indispensable to a movement’s success:

It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.

The True Believer, §57

Niebuhr’s project, like Bishop John Spong’s and other Christians of goodwill, is doomed. Science has undone supernaturalism and, truth be told, the New Testament texts are the writings of a vengeful cult; the ethical teachings aren’t that good.

Slowly, fitfully, uncertainly, humanity is headed out of the decadence of the Abrahamic faiths; they are untrue, and have nothing on offer — least of all relief from the moral duty to think.

You’ve probably been wondering, Have my tax dollars been put to good use during the past week?

• Pastor convicted in child sex assault case found in Honduras

  Authorities say a church pastor who fled the country after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage boy has been detained in the Honduras.

  Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez announced the capture of Gregorio Martinez on Sunday. She said he was apprehended Tuesday in the town of Danli, but further details were not disclosed.

With all his advantages, Jerry Falwell, Jr., has grown-up to be an idiot. Now, he is peddling the idea that The Donald is a contemporary — get ready — Winston Churchill.

The policies of Obama and Clinton have made the world unstable and unsafe and created a world stage eerily similar to that of the late 1930s. We could be on the precipice of international conflict like nothing we have seen since World War II. Obama and Clinton are the Neville Chamberlains of our time. The deal to make $150 billion available to Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and a nation committed to the destruction of Israel, clearing the way for Iran to become a nuclear power, reminds me of Chamberlain’s deal with Hitler in 1938, when the British prime minister declared “peace for our time.”

Never mind that the experts, the people who have done the hard work of mastering the issues, are unanimous that the deal makes it more difficult for Iran to become a nuclear power. The unhappy truth is that the loony right is so sick with hatred of everybody who isn’t just like themselves that they can’t think straight.

No less an authority than an Italian bishop has determined that Pokemon GO is just like Nazism!!

An Italian bishop has threatened to take legal action against “Pokemon Go,” describing the game as “diabolical” and a “totalitarian system like Nazism.”

Bishop Antonio Stagliano, whose diocese is centered in the Baroque tourist town of Noto in Sicily, was quoted by several newspapers on Thursday (Aug. 18) saying he was prepared to go to court to have the popular app banned “to preserve the social stability of the men and women in his region.”

I’m guessing he’s upset because a bunch of tourists were standing outside his cathedral catching Pokemons and didn’t come inside and give him money.

Well. It seems that some scientists at CERN — that bunch who recently confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson, the so-called God Particle, thereby undoing the Cosmological, or First Cause, argument for the existence of Our Invisible Friend — staged a mock, Blair Witch Project-like sacrifice of a female co-worker (Strong language: NSFW).

“These scenes were filmed on our premises but without official permission or knowledge,” a Cern spokeswoman told Agence France-Presse in an email.

“Cern does not condone this type of spoof, which can give rise to misunderstandings about the scientific nature of our work.”

So a bunch of physicists were probably sitting in some bar and decided it would be fun to mock the Godly folk who are still baffled that Noah’s Ark has never been found.

Tasteless? I suppose. I don’t mind admitting, though, that I probably would have participated if I’d been there and had the opportunity, and freely told the story afterward.