And while on the subject of politics...

I was watching C-Span last night and learned something I'd not known at the time. Apparently during the last presidential election a Richard Hand of Bob Jones University circulated an e-mail among South Carolinians to the effect that John McCain sired dark-skinned children outside marriage. The existence of the e-mail served to illustrate Karl Rove's use of dirty tricks.

I have been blessed not to reside in South Carolina. I'm wondering if any of our readers have a copy of that e-mail.

I'm also curious in what field of study Richard Hand was instructing at Bob Jones, and is he still with the institution for this election?

We're hearing the most transparent lies and outlandish promises from the most spectacularly corrupt, unscrupulous, power-hungry castoffs from the cultivated life. Any day now we could learn that Hillary flew U2 missions during the Cold War or that she helped write the Magna Carta.

The whimper of political simpletons is heard throughout the land. Especially quaint are the bleats of the emergents as Obama's poll numbers dip to alarming levels. The god of the emergents is all in a dither. He too appears to be under sniper fire.

For the few who might be interested in the history of real ideas, I suggest this site. The defense of the West now seems like a negligible thing, but for those not opposed in principle to clear thought, you might want to take a short course offered here.

Because it's time we untangle the narrative of faith from the fundamentalists, pious self-helpers and religio-profiteers. And let's do it with holy mischief rather than ideological firepower.

We'll explore the point at which word, action and image intersect, and then ignite. So let's blaspheme the gods of super-powerdom, instigate spiritual action campaigns and revamp that old Picture Bible.

We've set up camp in the outback of the spiritual commons. A bustling spot for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable. A location just beyond boring bitterness. A place for wannabe contemplatives, front-line world-changers and restless cranks. A place where the moon shines quiet, instinct runs mythic and belief rides a bike (or at least sits on the couch entertaining the possibility).

Another sad lot of posers and wannabes speak to us of things ephemeral.

If it is difficult for you to grasp the significance of the fundagelicals' error, you have an object lesson here. This will not help you identify the permanent things, but it may help you get some sense of what happens when they are lost. It will not help you love what is beautiful, but maybe you can begin to hate what is cheap and cheesy. It's not the right way to start, but perhaps it can be a start of some sort.

The art of our time, sacred art included, will necessarily be characterized by a certain poverty, grimness and roughness which correspond to the violent realities of a cruel age.

"The art of our time": a phrase that captures it all. This is an art that shares nothing with Death and the Maiden, the B Minor Mass or The Celestial Country.

This is the cheapest of propaganda, banal magazine illustration in service to some really high ideals like "Make Affluence History", "De-motorize Your Soul", and "Buy Nothing Christmas".

Now there's a message befitting restless cranks.

Here is a place where belief rides a bike, or if it doesn't, it relaxes on a couch thinking about belief riding a bike.

I wonder how many fundamentalists will take responsibility for this?

 

Still like that old time rock ‘n roll
That kind of music just soothes the soul
I reminisce about the days of old
With that old time rock ‘n roll.
 

Someone sent me these four lines and I checked it out. I found the whole song and was struck by this bit:

Won't go to hear them play a tango
I'd rather hear some blues or funky old soul
There's only sure way to get me to go
Start playing old time rock 'n roll
Call me a relic, call me what you will
Say I'm old-fashioned, say I'm over the hill
Today' music ain't got the same soul
I like that old time rock 'n roll.

Change "rock ‘n roll" to "Christ-honoring music" and you have the churchlady's sentiments exactly.

One is struck with all this ephemera. No one can keep what he loves because he changes and what he loves changes. Wouldn't it just be grand if Christians loved and understood what never changes?

Of course this sentimental hedonism always comes back to bite. Check out a version of Christianity I found recently. Here speaks a grandson of evangelicalism, also living on the trailing edge of the times.

You do not need a salvation testimony : We clearly follow Jesus and worship Him, but if you don't, that's cool.

Disagree with our Statement of Faith : We like people who disagree with us as long as it's for the purpose of learning from each other and it's all done in love.  But please please please, if you disagree, speak the hell up!

Disagree with our Core Values : Well, we're a missional run community, chances are  if you think the same way, you'll like it, but if you think differently you won't and probably seek community elsewhere, BUT you can come.  We still love you!  Just re-read he explanation about our ‘anti' Statement of Faith above.

Sprinkle or Dunk, if you choose to follow Christ, we don't care, just get wet : And we'll share bread and wine together too. 

Don't get involved with us : Get involved in your community and your world.  Go be light in darkness.  Build relationships.  Invite the sinners and tax collectors to dine with you and you with them.

Don't Participate in Ministry : Live the Revolution

Isn't that precious?

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God's face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.

--- John Donne

For those who still have their books open, Chapter 4 gives me the willies. Of unliterary readers Lewis says:

1. They never, uncompelled, read anything that is not narrative.
2. They have no ears.
3. Not only as regards the ear but also in every other way they are either quite unconscious of style, or even prefer books which we should think are badly written.
4. They enjoy narratives in which the verbal element is reduced to the minimum...
5. They demand swift-moving narrative.

What was true in 1961 is true today. At a time when movement leaders lament their inability to "reach the young" and to instill in them an appreciation for their past, they lack a remedy. And it is sad to watch as an entire movement which has only a hammer treats every problem like a nail.

"The song in question should be commended primarily due to its doctrinely-rich lyrical content."

No, sorry; that old wheeze needs a rest.

As Tozer told us, we must feel in our hearts. We are currently thrashing about trying to recreate a doctrinally rich liturgy—which is a necessary thing: we can't look at the work of Garlock, Hamilton, Amy Grant and Reliant K without seeing a wasteland of the "doctrinely-rich". But it would seem obvious to the least astute fundagelical, we have piles and piles of "doctrine-rich" texts left to us by our fathers. Why aren't we returning to those?

Because they cannot be felt. We can no longer cultivate the imagination. We lack the power of the word. Hollywood captures the imagination. We can only regret that the Gospels don't have any compelling chase scenes or really impressive explosions. Without those things, without a suspenseful narrative, we have no way to touch the illiterate heart.

If you have decided once and for all not to read An Experiment in Criticism, I would recommend your reading at least Chapter III, How the Few and the Many Use Pictures and Music.

I'm not advising you to read only a part, but if you are determined not to consider the whole book, I think you would profit by at least entertaining the distinction Lewis makes. Many people use pictures and music, a few receive them. Those are very different things.

We must not loose our own subjectivity upon the pictures and use them as vehicles. We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all our own preconceptions, interest, and associations. We must make room for Botticelli's Mars and Venus, or Cimabue's Crucifixion, by emptying out our own. After the negative effort, the positive. We must use our eyes. We must look and go on looking till we have certainly seen exactly what is there. We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.

[...]

The distinction can hardly be better expressed than by saying that the many use art and the few receive it.

This may sound spooky at first, but take your time and read it thoughtfully. This really is not as esoteric as any one quotation will make it seem. Lewis is talking to the layman and he prided himself on his ability to write to all sorts of readers. The distinction is easily grasped, and given the recent examples we've seen hereabouts, it is extremely serious.

It is one thing to belch, lean back with a fresh beer for the pregame and think uncomplimentary thoughts about those hifalutin types downtown at the concert hall. It is another thing to consider exactly how God used poetry in Revelation, and how art has been used throughout church history.

Are you prepared to live with the possibility that whether it is King David or Tersteegen or Watts, you are engaged in a profound abuse of God's creation?

What if it is true that our shepherds judge a piece of liturgy based on the components one appreciates, what keeps one's interest, and what enables meditation?

And consider the relationship between that attitude and the present problem, worshipers who come to worship demanding personal uses, preferences and opinions.

How's that workin' out for us?

In this essay I propose to try an experiment. Literary criticism is traditionally employed in judging books. Any judgment it implies about men's reading of books is a corollary from its judgment on the books themselves. Bad taste is, as it were by definition, a taste for bad books. I want to find out what sort of picture we get by reversing the process. Let us make our distinction between readers or types of reading the basis, and our distinction between books the corollary. Let us try to discover how far it might be plausible to define a good book which is read in one way, and a bad book as a book which is read in another.

Those are the first words out of C.S. Lewis's pen in An Experiment in Criticism.

A lot of religious people claim to have read CSL, but I really don't believe most of them. It's a little like the poor sap who tries to get a date by telling the girl he has a hot car. Nothing in evangelical culture leaves evidence that it has anything but one of those goofy mopeds with pastel streamers on the handlebars. I doubt they have read C.S. Lewis when it comes to making aesthetic evaluations; not Experiment in Criticism, not Preface to Paradise Lost, not Studies in Words...

But I wander. I blame my cold.

I should like to continue the process of disillusioning the many who suppose we share a distaste for "bad Christian music". Sometimes similarities are deceiving, and sometimes it is possible to illustrate how so. Just because we both dislike liver doesn't mean we both like spinach, and when it comes to religious music, we (or at least some) are gradually coming to see that we together will have to like many things, not just hate the same one thing.

When people find out that music is an avocation which, according to their lights I take out of all proportion, they share with me their love of "the classics". It used to be that their eyes lit up and they said "Oh, yes! We have some Boston Pops records at home!"

I was thrilled for them. We would all jump up and down for a bit.

But those happy days are gone; Arthur Fiedler is no longer calling the tunes. Now they speak of Beethoven for Baby or Mozart for Mothers-To-Be or The Mozart Effect. Now there is a label [Decca] containing Music For Sunday Morning (assuming you're staying home from church to relax), Music For A Lazy Day, Music For A Stormy Evening, Music For A Quiet Evening....

Sometimes, when the people are young or when I feel like chatting, we talk about music. Other times, when I wish these people would just go away, I tell them it's not the same thing, we hear completely different things when we listen to the same music. There's really nothing to discuss.

This shocks them. They've been raised to enjoy self-esteem and pretend a love for diversity, and I treat them like they eat boogies. But good readers are doing something bad readers aren't. Good listeners are hearing what bad listeners are not. It's not a question of style or personal preference at all.

They of course don't understand the difference between themselves and literate people. They could know if they wanted to, but they don't want to. Ask a typical evangelical about art and he will babble about the arts in the Bible and the great Western Tradition of Biblical Art, or whatever it is he can remember from college; but look at what he does. Read the "film" reviews in Christianity Today, read the "thought questions" at the end. Watch the fundies giggle at Wilde. Check out the level of art discussed on Arts&Faith.com. Or check your favorite outlet: Ted Baehr or James Dobson.

But I said earlier, it is sometimes possible to illustrate what the many are doing when they should be doing something else. Take a look at this, ummm, "review" and ask yourself if this is a review or an advertisement. Is it about music or is it about a product?  What is here other than a mere "collection of tunez".

I select one gem. I am very suspicious of fundamentalists' views of the blood; I've been burned more than once. But here is McCrorie's review of Jesus Thy Blood and Righteousness:

Okay, WOW!  This one begins rather simply-deceptively so.  You hear a beautiful orchestral introduction with a harpsichord playing steady quarter notes underneath the accomplaniment, almost like the beginning of a ballad. That should have tipped me off that this song would be anything but typical.  As the song progressed, it PROGRESSED!  The use of alternative harmonies, dissonance, and dynamic shifts really kept me listening.  I liked it.  It may be a bit much for some of the more conservative lot; but for those of us who enjoy a bit more modern sound, this is great!

The song progressed as it progressed, it kept him listening, and he liked it. Surely Matthew Arnold is speaking to us from his grave!

Why would it "be a bit much" for the more conservative lot? Should we or should we not "enjoy a bit more modern sound"? How does this "more modern sound" contribute to our appreciation of the blood and righteousness? What is the point, Brian?

What is the purpose of music, evangelicals?

In a collection like this, I would typically find 3-4 songs that I would use in my church.  However, in King of Love, I would probably end up using 10-11 of these with my choir and church family. 

Can I say how impressed I am?

Nope, I don't think I can.

There is a reason I listen to Death and the Maiden and a reason I do not listen to Soundfroth. There is a reason I read the Magnificat and a reason I don't give a rip about Majesty Hymns. How is it that the Psalms of David, written centuries ago in a culture I would find crude and barbaric, should have meaning to me and the drivel of yesterday leaves me coughing with laughter?

Once again, folks: it really isn't talking about seriousness that matters. What matters is being serious. How might one become serious? By listening to Soundfroth? By reading McCrorie?

Governor of New York a.k.a. Client #9 a.k.a. john.

The sheer arrogance of power and an $80,000 recreation budget?

Evangelicalism has never chased relevance more determinedly than it does now. And yet, we've never been more irrelevant. That could be purely accidental, and other factors are behind it, but I would argue that we've pursued the wrong type of relevance.

So said Os Guinness in 2003. Christianity Today is linking to it again today in what I take to be an endearing stab at irony. (I have no doubt the editors over at CT have read of my love for irony and thought that if they threw me this bone, I would lay off their sad rag.)

The good news is that the evangelical church was and is irrelevant, and now the word is out. The bad news is that it will continue to be irrelevant as well. It is a little like the 38 year old couch potato who becomes fascinated with NFL football and decides he's going to try out as running back next season.

Good luck with that.

Where Mr. Guinness falls off the beam is in supposing we can go back now and pick up where we left off. Good luck with that too. Indeed, in the intervening four years there is no indication that the church is any more relevant than when this interview took place.

You see, it is not "purely accidental"; when you reject the permanent things you reject the relevant things. The only relevant things are permanent things. So having failed to produce relevance after this long, fruitless chase, now they are going to succeed by giving up the chase?

Good luck with that.

But just between you and me, here's my advice: learn about and teach people what is permanent. I'm going to list five permanent things. You can buy or borrow these and get some sense of what you are up against. I suspect evangelicals won't give it much thought because of the time it would take out of their movie-watching schedule.

But anyway, here are some great works dealing with permanent things and executed by eminently competent artists. Your reaction to these may give you some sense of how adept you will be an achieving "relevance".

Horowitz Live and Unedited, Sony Classical, 2796-93023-2
Goldberg Variations, Daniel Barenboim, Erato, 2292-45468-2
Mendelssohn Symphony #5, John Eliot Gardiner, Deutsche Grammophon, 28945-93652-3
Death and the Maiden, Guarneri String Quartet, Arabesque Recordings, 26724-6687-2
...which was the son of... Paul Hillier, Harmonia Mundi, HMU 907407

Those of us who enjoy architecture have learned from bitter experience that every building, from a potting shed to Chartres Cathedral, requires a good foundation. Nothing is more important than laying down a stable bed of marshmallows on which to build.

A recent discussion portends an ecclesiastical disaster. Not everything in these remarks is equally unstable, but there are enough people here engaged in romantic memories of separatism to plant some doubt as to whether this building will ever get a C of O. (Paul Lim suggests, interestingly enough, that The Fundamentals provide a footing for a building that might have stood. There's a novel idea! Doran and Minnick, ironically, seem to speak of a different fundamentalism, a more private and spastic movement. One wonders if Lim and Minnick are looking at the same thing. Given a contemporary fundamentalism still cleft by disputes over translations and Bible versions, liturgy and religious entertainments, and a Goldilocks dress code, it might be worthwhile to ask which fundamentalist it is we can learn from.)

James MacDonald notes that "...good people, who agreed with the doctrinal positions of Fundamentalism, left because they knew that ‘mixed bathing,' music/movie choices, and length of hair or dresses were not accurate assessments of an individual's commitment to biblical holiness."

The general belief is that fundamentalism can teach us something about separation from error, but it also warns us not to go too far. This of course is an epic silliness. A real virtue cannot be taken too far. If the perception is that the virtue of separation somehow morphed into the vice of contentiousness, then we are not accounting for all the facts.

J. Gresham Machen, we note, has not gone down in history as a shrinking violet with respect to heterodoxy, yet he condemned the movement from the start. It would seem that MacDonald's "good people" who left merely discovered a flaw that was known at the time. Some fundamentalists' claim of "defense of the Gospel" seems a bit too overblown.

But then maybe overblown is what one looks for in a marshmallow. We will watch to see how this spongy confectionery works out for these modern evangelicals.

It is not the error we reject that properly motivates us, it is the truth we love.

You heard it here first.

Well not first, exactly.

Maybe last.

Here is something worth knowing. Without suggesting you entirely believe or disbelieve, you should consider this possibility rather than fantasizing about the impossible based on nostalgia and good intentions.

Here in less than 5,000 words, you might reflect on the long line of culture and the conditions for a return to a coherent, shared culture. Pay special attention to two concepts. The first has to do with a tradition within which an artist might work, and the second has to do with the cultural environment necessary for that to happen.

I will shut up so you can get started.

The question was raised about the resemblance between fundamentalism and political conservatism. This is of reasonable interest to many of our readers and it is worth a comparison.

Some of the similarities here got me to thinking. So to begin with, I twiddled on over to the John Birch site to see how they wrote of Buckley's death. You might well want to read this and notice the likeness to the sort of fundamentalist scandal-sheet prose some of us have come to despise, but you can learn something if all you read is this paragraph:

Buckley endeared himself to conservatives with his strong support of the candidacies of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. But he lost support among many when he backed the giveaway of the Panama Canal, called for legalization of marijuana, touted compulsory national service, excused the deficiencies of the United Nations, and even advocated wage and price controls. His choice of close friends included such liberals and internationalists as economist John Kenneth Galbraith, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and self-identified neoconservative leader Irving Kristol.

Notice the glaring absence of ideas, the lack of focus on any principles on which political action might rest; notice the fixation on selected policies and loyalty to ideology from which there can be no acceptable departure. (Notice that no mention is made of Buckley's comment about tattooing homosexuals.) Notice the fondness for conspiracy theories. Notice how easily one can be censured by casting aspersions on personal friendships. I think this is fascinating.

I think it is indicative.

Buckley said and wrote many things that conservatives found a) objectionable, b) infelicitously proposed, or c) insufficiently nuanced. But conservatives realized it was a political movement, not The Kingdom. The resurgence of the Conservative movement provided us with a Reagan, a Thatcher, and the end of the cold war. What has the John Birch society given us? John F. McManus?  A few giggles?

Conservatives hold a set of political virtues worth articulating and defending, fundamentalism doesn't. I know they will howl at this, but just put your fingers in your ears for the duration. (The duration is generally about a week in length. Fundamentalists cannot even agree on what is worth saving.) If there were a fundamentalism worth saving, I would be interested in hearing why there wasn't a fundamentalism J. Gresham Machen found worth joining. That might be the beginning of an enlightening conversation.

I think the answer is all around us.

There are many ways this has been made clear to us. If we look at the resurgence of conservatism we can look to many very real and practical means to their ends: ways of articulating and defending. Where is there for fundamentalism:

a National Review or American Spectator?
an ISI?
a Grove City or a Hillsdale College?
a Regnery Publishing?

Where are the Whittaker Chamberses, Russell Kirks, L. Brent Bozells, Friedrich von Hayeks...? What we in fact have is a loose confederacy of reactionaries who are happy to settle for Sheffey, Soundfroth and the Pettit Roving Hayseeds. Where would you send a spittle-flinging fundamentalist to get a terminal degree? What good reason is there that in a wealthy nation like the United States there is not a single seminary of adequate stature?

There were at one time some good books from Machen and a widely circulated set of ideas in the form of The Fundamentals. Whatever happened to them? Why did we end up with the BJ skit teams and G. Archer Weniger? Here, this is not my characterization, it is theirs:

Somehow in his busy schedule Weniger found time to write. In the early '50s he started a newsletter called The Blu-Print, which was printed back and front on a single 11 x 14 sheet of blue paper. It seems to be remembered most for its sometimes caustic style in exposing the hypocrisy of New Evangelicalism and the evil of liberalism. More than anything else, this paper seemed to give Weniger the image of being harsh. Less remembered, however, are its positive aspects; almost every issue of The Blu-Print contained a "note promoting some preacher, praising someone's effort, or pushing someone's paper or book. . . . It seemed to please Dr. Weniger to recognize and promote others. . . . His unselfish love for the brethren was an example to all Fundamentalists." Although his hide may have been tough, Weniger's heart remained tender.

Yes, how many was the time I laid down a tear-stained copy of The Blu-Print saying to myself, "Now there is a man with a tender heart".

Here is an indicator for the viability of a movement: why not let's have the FBF scan and publish the entire, unedited run of The Blu-Print?

To be reminded of this causes a lot of veins to bulge among those still loyal to this movement, but it never seems to cause any serious reflection. Fundamentalism is in its dotage, it embraced The Blu-Print for its conspicuous "love for the brethren" and all criticism of this mentality can still be deflected with a snappy little "Get over it".

Al Regnery said something recently that I found useful. He was asked to describe the relationship between the Republican Party and the conservative movement. The short version of his fuller answer was that the GOP was the political machinery for making nominations and producing candidates; the conservative movement was a set of ideas suspended in the minds of people capable of entertaining ideas. To whatever degree Regnery is correct, I think it sheds a lot of light on all religious movements today, including historical fundamentalism: heavy on the Party, light on the ideas.

Along came Marx, Darwin and Freud; you have a political/cultural response now being recalled upon the death of a founder of a major movement. You also had religious response. Where is the mystery in understanding the current wasteland of American Christianity?