Echoes of Dante in Kant

One of the great pleasures of reading and re-reading is encountering conceptual connections between authors and works that you may have never considered in common.  I had one of these experiences recently while reading a short book about Dante.  While working through the author's discussion of Monarchia and its relation to the Purgatorio, I found myself thinking that in some respects Dante's dualistic political philosophy anticipated important elements in Kant's short monograph Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and his essays "What Is Enlightenment?", "The Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent," and "Toward Perpetual Peace."

Dante and Virgil: Learning from Others

To what degree can, or should, we learn from others different from ourselves? Particularly, how much can, or should, we learn about the path that we believe we must take from those who have chosen a different path?  This is a question as much about social relations and integrated thinking as it is about personal identity and self-discovery.

In Dante’s Inferno, Canto 1, Dante affirms that Virgil is his guide and teacher:

'You are my teacher and my author. 

You are the one from whom alone I took 

the noble style that has brought me honor. 

     (Inferno, 1.85-87; all references to Hollander trans.)

Here Dante refers to his prior poetic writings.  The implication is that Dante will also inform the current poetic enterprise with its subject matter. This is somewhat curious because also in the first canto we read that Virgil will not be Dante’s guide in the last stage of his journey upward to “His city” (l. 126).  The reason Virgil gives is that he is not worthy to guide Dante through paradiso to God, and the reason for his unworthiness is that Virgil himself strayed from the righteous path that Dante seeks to find:

'Should you desire to ascend to these, 

 you'll find a soul more fit to lead than I: 

 I'll leave you in her care when I depart. 

 'For the Emperor who has His seat on high 

 wills not, because I was a rebel to His law, 

 that I should make my way into His city. 

(Inferno, 1.121-126)

Despite Virgil’s spiritual state as a reprobate, as a rebel, as someone in other words who did not bend his will to God and who did not follow his righteous path, Virgil himself asserts that he is, however, fit to instruct and lead Dante through hell:

'Therefore, for your sake, I think it wise 

you follow me: I will be your guide 

(Inferno, 1.112-13)

Yes, we learn later in the Inferno that God had commissioned Virgil for this task.  In Inferno canto 2, we learn that this commission came through three heavenly ladies, but the point is that Virgil bears God’s authority when interacting with inhabitants of hell at various stages. 

My own reflections about my current identity development and self-discovery prompted these thoughts as I recently read Dante’s Inferno:  Virgil the pagan poet is authoritatively permitted, commissioned, to instruct Dante in his pursuit of light and righteousness.  Virgil may have been opposite to God but yet still may be a reliable guide -- in fact, a heaven-sent guide.  The pagan poet acts as pedagogue to the spiritual pilgrim. 

So again, the particular related struggle or question:  What and how can I learn about the path I must take from those who have chosen a different path?

This question strikes me as one of universal concern.  It assumes that we are all wrestling with the question of self, of our own respective identities, while at the same time locating ourselves in connection with (and distinction from) others, even others not of our “circle.”  Or we are negotiating ever expanding circles.  What is the proper relationship?  How close is too close?  Will I be influenced overly by their decisions rather than finding the proper balance between their ideas and my own?

Dante and Virgil, rendered by Botticelli

In my own life, I am currently near that midpoint, just as Dante was, the nel mezzo.  I am trying to ask from familiar and unfamiliar points of view big questions about God (nature, revealed truth), about God’s relations to humans (of what sort is it?), about human nature and the relation of the mind to both the brain (is there really anything that is a “mind”? Is it somehow distinct from the physical brain and chemical reactions?), and about the nature of morality in general and its relationship to God in particular (what is the precise connection? Is there a necessary foundation?).

In asking these and other questions, I find that I must necessarily do at least two things. (1) I must reevaluate what I believe by taking stock first of what I actually think (perhaps with greater precision than I hitherto have or have in some while, a valuable enterprise itself).  And (2) I must weigh that review against the ideas of others who have followed paths that I have not before trodden. Is it better? If not, why is it worse? What to pursue, what to avoid?  What to retain, what to reject?

Of late in my own life have been wondering how modern neuroscientific conceptions of the brain bear on questions of human sinfulness, ethical behavior and responsibility, and the need for salvation at all. Physiologically, what goes into cognition and moral judgment?  What implications might there be, if any, on various religious belief if philosophical and psychological theories about the modular mind and the lack of anything like a singular “self” prove to be true?  What of the question of chemical explanations for innate ideas of transcendence and the divine?

The upshot, and the connection between Dante’s poem and my own external context (and perhaps one of universal concern) is the extent to which I can learn from guides or teachers not within my circle and yet continue to follow the righteous, God-approved path.  Dante altered his path, and in so doing also altered his conception of himself -- at least expanding it.  For Dante in the dark wood of the mid point of his life, it was not a matter of interacting with things like ancient Chinese thought or neuroscience.  But on his path he was surprised to find Virgil as his guide through the Inferno, a guide limited to a portion of the journey, but reliable nevertheless and divinely commissioned however different from Dante he may have been.  But Dante the poet was also relieved and encouraged to find his guide to be Virgil, the Roman poet par excellence.  And it may be that certain connections are more important than differences to initiate our exploration of both.

How may I learn from Virgil without befalling his fate?  That is perhaps one of Dante’s questions, and it is, metaphorically, mine and, in one way or another, also all of ours.

The Current State of Irreligion

Two recent publications caught my eye on the subject of religion -- or, more precisely, irreligion -- in the United States.  Let me briefly list them, highlight the main points, and add a comment or two.

Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 9: Universal Impulse

In a prior post in which I reflected on James Q. Wilson's book The Moral Sense, I drew attention to the universal impulse in moral sentiment that he identifies:  "The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise -- and occasionally the application -- of the view that all people, and not just one’s own kind, are entitled to fair treatment" (191).  Because it is so remarkable, and because it has such sweeping implications, it is worth probing further this topic about the development of universalism in moral thinking and practice.

We can begin by focusing on a question that Prof. Wilson himself poses:  "How can we explain the great expansion of the boundaries within which the moral sense operates?  How, in particular, can we explain why we believe that moral rules ought to have universal applicability?  This aspiration toward the universal is the chief feature of the moral history of mankind" (194).  Indeed.

Professor Wilson suggests that the long development of consensual marriage, particularly in northwestern Europe, helps to provide a key, but not the only, component of an explanation.

The link between the two, consensual marriage and universal moral applicability, may not be immediately apparent.  The tie, however, is the parallel development in northwestern Europe of individualism.  What is the connection?

Testing Tolerance

Until now I have tried to stay above the fray involving Chick-fil-A.  I post this only to say that the main point of an editorial in today's The New York Times strikes me as correct:  Government officials, such as the mayors of Boston and Chicago, the Speaker of the New York City Council, and an alderman of Chicago, ought not to discriminate against a lawful business enterprise on the basis of the personal views of the business owner.  Those officials have said that they would block additional expansion of Chick-fil-A franchises in their jurisdictions.

The editors at the Times, as well as NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, hold a view of the permissible parties involved in and the moral nature of marriage that is opposed to that of Chick-fil-A owner Dan Cathy.  What they both accurately recognize, however, is that the public relations campaign and business threats by government officials against Mr. Cathy amount to intolerance of his religious beliefs and his entitlement both to hold and to express them.  As Mr. Bloomberg is quoted in the editorial as saying, “You can’t have a test for what the owners’ personal views are before you decide to give a [business] permit to do something in the city.”

The Chicago and Boston mayors', the NYC councilwoman's, and the Chicago alderman's views are intolerant because they seek to deny public rights (the rights to pursue property and lawful enterprise) as an attempt to censure private rights (the rights to free religious belief, free speech, and liberty of conscience).  These officials may attempt this in protest to, or as an expression of disagreement about, some other closely-held matter, but they are still intolerant.

And they are intolerant, moreover, because they deny in practice something at the heart of political liberalism, the fact of reasonable pluralism.  In a contemporary democratic society, John Rawls observes, the fact of reasonable pluralism is "the fact of profound and irreconcilable differences in citizens' reasonable comprehensive religious and philosophical conceptions of the world, and in their views of the moral and aesthetic values to be sought in human life" (Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 3).  The government officials do this -- deny in effect the fact of reasonable pluralism -- precisely by seeking to banish from their political communities (because they cannot be tolerated) those who differ in moral and civic viewpoints from them.  They do not accept profound and irreconcilable differences in worldview; they wish to eliminate them.  The officials make no room for public debate about how to balance in the community all agreed upon liberties with those that may be disputed.  In fact, they make little to no room for the exponents themselves who hold and express differing viewpoints.

In this vein, a creative thought experiment was narrated by Mona Charen in a column that she titled "Al-Rahim and Chicago Values."  She describes a situation in which a Muslim business owner of convenience stores articulates to a Muslim periodical his belief in the traditional, Quranic view of marriage, which is a man's having not more than four wives.  Apparently this differs from the view of marriage held by the mayors of Chicago and Boston, who go on record that they will do all within their power to prevent him from opening up more convenience stores in their cities, because his personal beliefs about heterosexual matrimony are at odds with their and their cities' approach to marriage and civil unions.  What would the response be to this Muslim man's comments?

This is a thought experiment, because it is retelling the story of Mr. Cathy as Mr. Al-Rahim, the story of a Christian businessman's expression of his personal viewpoint as the story of a Muslim's.  As Ms. Charen explains, "Rahim is an invention to illustrate the selective outrage of liberal Democrats. It is simply impossible to imagine that liberal Democrats would treat affirmations of Muslim faith with the kind of bullying that Cathy and Chick-fil-A have received.  Yet Islam is at least as doctrinally tough on homosexuality as Christianity is, and considerably tougher in practice."

The fact of reasonable pluralism, as Prof. Rawls understands it, is an unavoidable fixture of contemporary democratic republics such as the one in the United States.  It is also, as the present brouhaha attests, difficult to navigate in conjunction with a commitment to the core and treasured liberties of the moderns:  freedom of thought, speech, property ownership, and liberty of conscience.  (I borrow the phrase "liberties of the moderns" from Prof. Rawls; see Justice as Fairness, 140-45.)  As much as definitions of fairness still need to be clarified carefully, about which I wrote in a previous post, so, too, does the concept of tolerance.

Tolerance of a belief is not the same as acceptance of that belief.  In my view, however, in common, everyday practice, tolerance has become in many people's minds synonymous with conforming to, or acceptance of, their viewpoint.  This conception of tolerance is the converse of the popular conception of intolerance:  If you accept my view about P, then you are tolerant; if you do not accept -- do not agree with, do not conform to -- my view about P, then you are intolerant.  Disagreement is designated intolerance; reasonable difference of opinion is often quickly labeled bigotry.

But this popular conception, where it prevails, not only may serve as easy ad hominem argumentation.  This conception evacuates tolerance of all its meaning, for tolerance assumes non-acceptance.  It presupposes disagreement.  It says that a differing viewpoint and the one who holds it are not to be excluded from public discourse and the public square.  Reasonable disagreement will be endured and respected -- tolerated.  By contrast, to be intolerant is to be unwilling to grant equal freedom of expression or to penalize people unjustly for making free expressions.

The fact of reasonable pluralism tests real and workable conceptions of tolerance.  We may not agree with the fictional Mr. Al-Rahim's endorsement of traditional, Quranic marriage.  We may object to the real-life Mr. Cathy's advocacy of traditional marriage as a conjugal union.  These sorts of expression of speech and conviction of conscience are rights protected by the Constitution and enshrined as Constitutional essentials.

What we may not do, however, is this.  In advocating for fairness for all, we may not practice a selective view of fairness for some.  In an attempt to prevent certain Muslims and Christians from supposedly treating a group as separate but equal (for so goes the argument for same-sex "marriage"), we may not treat these Muslims and Christians themselves as separate but equal.  We may not, in other words, claim that they are equal but seek to separate them from our civic and business life.

But this is what the mayors of Chicago and Boston have done.  They say, "You may have your beliefs, but you cannot pursue your conception of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our community through your business enterprise.  You are equal, but you must remain separate from us.  We can discriminate, but you cannot."  In so doing, that is, by practicing a real separate-but-equal approach to matters of freedom of speech and lawful employment, these officials have undermined their professed moral justification for same-sex marriage on the basis of the same, namely, ending a purported practice of separate but equal.

Whether, in fact, the debate about the definition of marriage admits, as some parties believe, the separate but equal line from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is another matter.  The black community, for instance, does not on the whole view the subject in that light, and they might be positioned better than others to know separate but equal when they see it.  Separate but equal sounds nice; it is a powerful sound bite with a known civil rights pregnancy; but I am not sure that upon closer inspection it fully applies.  The debate about marriage seems to me fundamentally about the wisdom and propriety of redefining -- and thereby changing -- an indispensable cultural/civil (and arguably religious) institution, as well as about the moral consequences entailed by such a redefinition.

Be that as it may, the mayoral hubbub about Chick-fil-A demonstrates the ways in which so-called tolerance is frequently championed but inconsistently practiced.  For calling out what would amount to unjust policing and penalizing of law-abiding citizens and businesses for protected First Amendment rights, The New York Times editorial board is to be commended.

Why bother?

A Friday op-ed by Jay Akasie in The Wall Street Journal and a Sunday op-ed by Ross Douthat in The New York Times both addressed the same topic:  the current state of the Episcopal Church in the United States.  According to both men, the current state is distressing.  What is said of the Episcopal Church could be said of any of the mainline Protestant denominations.

Mr. Douthat's main point is that the less distinctively Christian in teaching mainline, or liberal, Christian churches in this country become, the more they hasten their demise.  Their member ranks and financial giving dwindle.  This is a trend that has been continuing for decades and threatens the very future existence of these bodies.

When, as Mr. Akasie reports of the Episcopal General Convention, "During the day, legislators in the lower chamber, the House of Deputies, and the upper chamber, the House of Bishops, discussed such weighty topics as whether to develop funeral rites for dogs and cats, and whether to ratify resolutions condemning genetically modified foods. Both were approved by a vote...," then it is the case, as Mr. Douthat observes, "Today, by contrast [to a previous era], the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism."

This observation might be new to the regular readers of the Times.  It is not, however, a subject that is new at all.  In 1923 a Presbyterian minister named J. Gresham Machen published a book the title of which crystallizes his concern:  Christianity and Liberalism.  The conjunction and in the title signifies the difference between the nouns on either side of it.  His concern then was that Protestant churches were being overrun by the Social Gospel movement, which under his examination turned out to be mostly social and little to no gospel:

But one thing is perfectly plain -- whether or no liberals are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity.  And that being the case, it is highly undesirable that liberalism and Christianity should continue to be propagated within the bounds of the same organization.  A separation between the two parties in the Church is the crying need of the hour. (160)

Dr. Machen's point was essentially that which Mr. Douthat articulates, something that might be colloquially put this way:  "Why bother?"  Why would the world bother with the church if it is little more than an imperfect version of the world?

History has proven in the time since Dr. Machen's publication that the liberals in the world do, on the whole, in fact become less inclined to attend liberal churches.  That is something characteristic of the way that liberalism and its exponents interact with the Christian church.  The world of secular liberalism does a much better job of offering liberalism than the clumsy ways of liberal ecclesiastical bodies trying to resolve a religious identity crisis.

Despite the similarities between Sunday's op-ed in the Times and Christianity and Liberalism, there is a point at which Dr. Machen would disagree with something noted in Mr. Douthat's column.  It is when Mr. Douthat quotes Gary Dorrien, who argues that the exponents of the original Social Gospel movement were much more dogmatic (read: orthodox) than current Protestant liberals.  The impression given is that as a class the first Protestant liberals were both orthodox and sufficiently socially minded.  Professor Dorrien, himself a Protestant liberal, might view the past with a little more nostalgia than all of the evidence warrants.  Mr. Douthat quotes him as saying of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Protestant progressivism:

Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

That is debatable, and in fact it was debated.  To be sure, Mr. Dorrien's description is true of some Social Gospelers, but it is not necessarily true of them all.  Reading a person's heart is a tricky business.  Interpreting one's doctrinal statement of faith, what is affirmed and denied, is a bit easier.  And it was precisely on this front that Dr. Machen was prompted to pen his book.

It was, in other words, precisely because things like the transcendence of God, the divinity of Christ, and the sole effectiveness of redemption through Jesus' substitutionary atonement were denied that Dr. Machen felt compelled by conviction to, in today's term, "call out" these very denials.  See, for instance, chapter 3, "God and Man," chapter 5, "Christ," and chapter 6, "Salvation." 

About these things, one can disagree, and Dr. Machen was the first to admit as much.  What he desired most was honesty.  He wished for the churches in his day to be clear that the message that it advanced about these subjects was not the historic Christian teaching:

In my little book, Christianity and Liberalism, 1923, I tried to show that the issue in the Church of the present day is not between two varieties of the same religion, but, at bottom, between two essentially different types of thought and life. There is much interlocking of the branches, but the two tendencies, Modernism and supernaturalism, or (otherwise designated) non-doctrinal religion and historic Christianity, spring from different roots. In particular, I tried to show that Christianity is not a "life," as distinguished from a doctrine, and not a life that has doctrine as its changing symbolic expression, but that -- exactly the other way around -- it is a life founded on a doctrine. (Machen, "Christianity in Conflict")

This brings up another point both in Dr. Machen's own writings and in Mr. Douthat's article:  the life that is connected to Christians and their institutions.

It is said, by Mr. Douthat for one, that "[t]he defining idea of liberal Christianity -- that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion -- has been an immensely positive force in our national life."  This is not something that people should wish to sacrifice.  That it would be sacrificed if non-liberal versions of Christianity were to be ascendant is a false inference.  It was leveled at confessional Christian churches in the 1920s, just as it is the working assumption today.

One can see from Dr. Machen's own reflection on Christianity and Liberalism that thought and life, or we might say teaching and social outworkings, go together; they are inseparable.  The point that he never ceased to emphasize was just the logical priority of the one to the other.  As he put it, it is "a life founded on a doctrine."

And it is not just the individual life that is in view.  Human institutions, as well, may be positively affected, the very institutions that some fear that a so-called conservative approach to Christianity would ignore.  Once again, Dr. Machen:

It is upon this brotherhood of twice-born sinners, this brotherhood of the redeemed, that the Christian founds the hope of society.  He finds no solid hope in the improvement of earthly conditions, or the molding of institutions under the influence of the Golden Rule.  These things indeed are to be welcomed.  But in themselves their value, to the Christian, is certainly small. ... Human institutions are really to be molded, not by Christian principles of the unsaved, but by Christian men; the true transformation of society will come by the influence of those who have themselves been redeemed.  (158)

Now, what it means to be redeemed and to what end society should be transformed are open to debate, and it is just these two things that were debated as modernism swept through American churches at the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s.

Dr. Machen meant redemption in the historic Christian sense of someone's deserving punishing condemnation by God for rejecting God as God in thought and life, but that person receives, instead, demerited favor because God condemned as a substitute Jesus to whom the sinner is united:  the human is united with Jesus in his death (condemned really but not physically with Jesus on the cross) and in his resurrection (vindicated really now and in the future physically with Jesus in his glorified life in the Spirit).

And Dr. Machen envisioned a societal transformation organically flowing from the charity that became increasingly manifest in the words and actions of those who both were already and were in the process of being transformed by the power of the life-giving Spirit -- the same life-giving Spirit by which Jesus was raised, even redeemed, from the dead.  This is not the redemption that, treasured though it rightly is, an alcoholic experiences by becoming and staying sober.

To note these things does, however, raise a question about terms.  It is not just questions about terms like "redemption" and "transformation" but also about terms like "liberal" and "conservative."  We should admit that these are slippery terms.  They can obscure and hinder conversation perhaps more than they can advance it.  Such terms advance conversation and thinking when they summarize in a word a more involved nexus of ideas and when the defined or connoted summaries are agreed upon by all parties.  That does not always happen today.  These words are often used instead as pejoratives imbued with animosity and unfair attributions.  This is a danger to recognize and to avoid, but I am less sure than perhaps others that the term liberal as Mr. Douthat and even Dr. Machen used it fall into that trap.

The Protestant liberals that Mr. Douthat has in view self-identify as liberals.  They wear their liberalism on their sleeve as a badge, and they don it, often, in their culture wars as a coat of mail.  Typically the self-conception of Protestant liberalism will nod to historic Christian doctrines such as sin and salvation so far as they do not get in the way of the perceived to be more important matter of "social justice" -- the contemporary term for the societal reform and progressivism that Mr. Dorrien identifies.

Or, to put it differently, in view are the denominations as such, not necessarily every member within them.  When Mr. Douthat refers to liberal Protestants and displays the Episcopal Church and its leaders as the poster child, most people generally know what liberal Protestantism is through such an example.  My point is that clarifying terms is important, but the terms in this conversation are filled with sufficient meaning for the conversation to take place without embarking upon a Socratic dialogue to define them.

What is worth embarking upon in dialogue is the relationship between Christian doctrine and its (social) outworkings.  What Dr. Machen predicted was that taken to its conclusion Protestant liberalism ceases to be Christian.  What Mr. Douthat describes is a denomination, the Episcopal Church, whose very identity and life seem troubled by the loss of historic Christian markers and the addition of politically and religiously liberal ones.  How the institutions that persist in promoting distinctively Christian teachings should manifest those professed realities in their lives is another question for another time.

What I wish to emphasize is that the topic of Mr. Douthat's column is not new.  We would do well to heed lessons from a fuller history.

One lesson is the necessary step of identifying the relationship between Christianity and liberalism.  Yes; what is in fact, as I have called it, distinctively Christian is open to debate.  But that debate itself should signal by its very fact that some perceived shift is occurring.  Is an implication of Mr. Douthat's column that the Episcopal Church is showing itself increasingly, because of its self-understood liberalism, to be concerned with matters that are not clearly Christian and are not clear implicates of historic Christianity?  If so, was not this the institution-threatening tendency that Dr. Machen identified in 1920s Presbyterianism?

Another lesson is that the supposed dichotomy between liberalism as leading to admirable social outworkings of Christianity, on the one side, and historic, or "conservative," Christianity as leading to no admirable social outworkings, on the other, is fallacious.  What has always existed is a difference between the two groups on how the beneficial effects of the change of thought and life, change that takes place in individual Christians and that is supposed to be apparent in their institutions, would and should manifest themselves in the body politic and society at large.

It may be that liberalism of an earlier era was more self-consciously focused on doctrine than it is now, but liberalism may not have been thereby more distinctively Christian than it is now.  Both versions, in their own ways, may have been more political, social, and cultural than Christian, as Dr. Machen understood it.  Even many of his contemporaries, although of course not all, agreed that he had reliably represented the liberal viewpoint.

H. L. Mencken, for instance, believed that Doctor Fundamentalis, as he called the Princetonian, was accurate in his depictions of modernist versions of Christianity.  In the Baltimore Evening Sun, the ardent atheist Mr. Mencken noted that liberals within Dr. Machen's denomination had "been trying, in late years to convert the Presbyterian Church into a kind of literary and social club, devoted vaguely to good works" (quoted in D. G. Hart, "J. Gresham Machen and the Problem of Christian Civilization in America," 2; see also Mencken's full obituary).  Who knows?  They might have even debated whether to develop funeral rites for dogs and cats or to condemn certain mass-produced foods.

Because it gets at the matter of individual and corporate refreshment provided by the church and of organic transformation of society that flows from that ministry, it is worth rereading the closing words of Dr. Machen's book:

At the present time, there is one longing of the human heart which is often forgotten -- it is the deep, pathetic longing of the Christian for fellowship with his brethren. ... There are congregations, even in the present age of conflict, that are really gathered around the table of the crucified Lord ... But such congregations, in many cities, are difficult to find.  Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into the Church to seek refreshment for the soul.  And what does one find?  Alas, too often, one finds only the turmoil of the world.  The preacher comes forward, not out of a secret place of meditation and power, not with the authority of God's Word permeating his message, not with human wisdom pushed far into the background by the glory of the Cross, but with human opinions about the social problems of the hour or easy solutions to the vast problems of sin. ... Thus the warfare of the world has entered even into the house of God.  And indeed sad is the heart of the man who has come seeking peace.

      Is there no refuge from strife?  Is there no place of refreshing where a man can prepare for the battle of life?  Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus' name, to forget for the moment all those things that divide nation from nation, race from race, to forget human pride, to forget the passion of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the Cross?  If there is to be such a place, then that is the house of God and that the gate of heaven.  And from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive a weary world.  (179-80)

More could be said.  This is a thorny subject.  I have attempted to introduce a perspective from an earlier time descriptively, because it seems to me to relate rather closely to the debates raging and the distressing church situations in our own time.  It is perhaps sufficient to observe here that the import of the columns by Mr. Akasie and by Mr. Douthat is that as the Episcopal Church, and perhaps mainline Protestantism generally, becomes more of an institution advocating for principles similar to a political and social segment of society, it becomes to that extent less relevant to society as a Christian institution.

This seems to these observers to be the case today, but it may not always be so.  There are times when, for instance, the moral vision of Christian institutions like the Episcopal Church has been mirrored in society in general.  Then the church was, although perhaps troubled and always imperfect, not in the state of dangerous demise that it is today.  The church may thrive even as its advocated ways are adopted in the culture.

The problem may not be with alignment of church and culture but, as Dr. Machen clearly argued and Mr. Douthat implies, with liberalism -- with liberalism itself within the church.  If the church increasingly reflects the liberal political and cultural order, but does it more poorly than the political punditry and cultural structures, then the question that every institution must ask itself relative to its members is, Why bother?

An Atheist Objects

This column by Aengus Woods on NPR's website engages the newest book by Alain de Botton, which I took up in a previous post.  It is helpful as an atheist's critique of an atheist's project.

God without God?

The publication of a new book titled Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton has been virally publicized on the web within the last couple of weeks.  Synoptic essays of the book's content have appeared in as wide-ranging places as the Wall Street Journal's Saturday essay on February 18 and a blog entry on the Huffington Post on March 2.  Given the buzz, it seems there is a real interest, which is worth considering.

Leviathan & Liberty

Whatever one's ultimate opinion about any number of contemporary topics -- from the Affordable Care Act to the limits of executive power, from government regulation of health care to the promotion of individual and religious liberty -- The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer made some keen observations about ten days ago with which everyone should wrestle.