Month: July 2011

 Students & friends, we continue below with the July Almanac readings and a question from Tabletalk magazine. We trust youʼre keeping up Tabletalkʼs daily studies in Ephesians, if not its current theme articles on fraternity or brotherhood.

July 12 — Jonathan Edwards   One of the sermons of this colonial New Englander (1703-1758), preached and first published in the 1740s, is the most anthologized work of its kind in the English language? The preacher, unfortunately, is remembered for little else in the secular world today and, accordingly, his reputation is that of a “fire and brimstone” evangelist. For the record, his voluminous writings and the testimonies of his peers prove him to be both a biblically-faithful pastor and one of the greatest intellects of all time.

July 14 — “Birkenʼead Drill”   This phrase became synonymous with brave, selfless, chivalrous manhood due to the rhymes of English poet Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)? Kipling was moved to memorialize the valor of the men, mostly Scottish Highlanders, who endured perhaps the worst naval tragedy in modern times aboard a troopship in the South Atlantic in July 1852. The Highlanders secured their women and children in the few available lifeboats and lined up in spirited military formation before their ship sank in shark-infested seas.

July 19 — New York Times / Abortion / Augustus St. Clair   Please write your own question here. An illuminating sketch that tells us, among other things, that the venerable American news organ, The New York Times, was not always pro-abortion. Note the post-Civil War time period and the national campaign the Timesʼ expose stimulated. Can you define “profligate,” “euphemism,” “opulent”? Lastly, donʼt miss the phrase “the dens of iniquity were simultaneously dens of inequity” as a descriptive summary of the abortion clinics of the day in major cities.

July 21 — Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) Please write your own question here. Some things to consider: what is Marshall best remembered for? what positions and offices did he hold? what high school irregularity may have launched his legal career? what landmark case (1954) did he argue and win before the U.S. Supreme Court? That latter case struck a blow against racial segregation, declaring “separate but equal” schools to be anything but equal.

doxology — (from July 13 daily Bible study in Tabletalk magazine)   This English word, derived from Greek roots that may be translated “a word of glory,” is used mostly in the context of church liturgies to indicate a hymn of praise to God? The New Testament writers clearly show such hymns to be the true aim of all faithful theological study. The Apostle Paul, for example, often breaks forth into exuberant praise of the perfections of the Divine Nature in his letters, particularly after explaining profound aspects of Godʼs redemptive purpose and plan (see Ephesians 3:20-21).

Students & friends, our Tuesday/Thursday Christian Almanac sketches for July are as
follows: July 5 & 7 — 12 & 14 — 19 & 21 — 26 & 28. Below are some of my weekly
questions and answers.
July 5 — Andrew Jackson
“Having considered it with that solemn regard to the principles of the Constitution which
the day was calculated to inspire, and come to the conclusion that it ought not to
become a law, I herewith return it to the Senate. . .with my objections.” Thus wrote this
U.S. President, nicknamed “Old Hickory,” in 1832 when he vetoed the Bank Renewal
Bill, by which Congress sought to extend the life of a federal financial institution whose
doubtful constitutionality and privileged economic status troubled the chief executive?

July 7 — 476 AD
Historians have generally used this year in the 5th-century AD to mark the so-called
fall of the Roman Empire (at least in western Europe)? That’s when the Germanic
warlord Odoacer marched his legions into Rome and took over the imperial palace with
almost no resistance. What’s typically billed as a “fall” was more like a gradual fading of
the political reality of empire (with ebbs and flows), but the ideal of a great confederation
of autonomous kingdoms, under imperial protection, lasted for over a thousand years.

statesman — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
This political term, says historian Clyde Wilson, describes one who “must be
something of a prophet–one who has an historical perspective and says what he
believes to be true and in the best long-range interest of the people, whether it is
popular or not”? Wilson contrasts this with a mere politician (all we get these days),
someone who “says and does whatever he thinks will get or keep him in power” and
whose sense of history is dictated by opinion polls and campaign contributions.

John C. Calhoun — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
A descendant of immigrants from Northern Ireland, this South Carolinian (1782-1850) served at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including the Vice Presidency and the Senate, for 40 years and proved himself one of our most brilliant political thinkers?
Written in his final months, his magnum opus, A Disquisition on Government, makes a
vital distinction between society and government, the latter (government) existing only
by virtue of the consent of and for the preservation of the former (society).

Nullification — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
If secession, however regrettable, is the ultimate expression of the states’ rights school
of the American tradition, the penultimate is this political act? What it entails, in brief,
is a state’s disavowal of a Federal law in its jurisdiction (for constitutional reasons)
pending some workable resolution of the conflict by both the Federal Government and
the States. Calhoun may have been its supreme advocate, but Jefferson and Madison
set forth the basic idea in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798).

“The past is never dead. In fact it is not even past.”
American cities and towns, not to mention our fifty states, no longer believe they have
any communal right either to affirm or deny religious faith. Vestiges of the “old-time
religion” in public places (like prayer, Bible reading, manger scenes, or Christmas
carols) sooner or later come under fire and are challenged in the courts. Our judges
usually rule against the practices in question however time-honored, but it is really
liberalism, and not the Constitution, that conditions their verdicts.

In 2006, as reported in the most recent issue of Chronicles, one of the customary
religious symbols of Italy (crucifixes in the schools) was challenged by a Finnish
immigrant, who claimed various human-rights and church-state provisions agreed to by
the European Union were being violated. A lower E.U. court sided with the disgruntled
Finn, to the deep displeasure of most Italians. But this story has ended happily, for now
at least. On appeal, the European Court of Human Rights said that Italy need not
remove the crucifixes from the classroom walls.

What’s really interesting are the comments on this case by one of the jurists of the
Human Rights Court, Giovanni Bonello of Malta. Given the judge’s appreciative
reference to Mississippi’s William Faulkner (quoted below), Americans especially should
take note. Bonello declared that, “A European court should not be asked to bankrupt
centuries of European tradition. No court, certainly not this Court, should rob the
Italians of part of their cultural patrimony. . . . The Court has been asked to be an
accomplice to a major act of cultural vandalism. I believe William Faulkner went to the
core of the issue: the past is never dead. In fact it is not even past.”

Bonello went on to say that, far from an act of religious neutrality, getting rid of those
crucifixes “would have been a positive and aggressive espousal of agnosticism or of
secularism. . . . Keeping a symbol where it has always been is no act of intolerance by
believers or cultural traditionalists. Dislodging it would be an act of intolerance by
agnostics and secularists.”

The judge was not afraid to call the crucifix “a timeless symbol of redemption through
universal love.” Apart from the desirability of the E.U. itself and any of its transnational
rulings, it’s good to see a man of standing in the West publicly acknowledge the vital
importance of religious traditions, in this case Roman Catholicism, to a society. True
conservatives know such things must trump abstract ideals like “liberty, equality,
fraternity” and a hundred others (rights, diversity, democracy, tolerance, etc.). Indeed,
such ideals find their meaning and concrete expression only in a living tradition, a past
that never really dies.

Now if we modern Americans, and our leaders, could be infused with some of Judge
Bonello’s spirit, maybe “the land of the free and the home of the brave” could be
something other than a distant memory.

Students & friends, what follows are some of my questions & answers on the last two
weeks of Christian Almanac readings (and an additional entry from Tabletalk):

June 21 — Christopher Wren
After London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, Charles II
chose this ingenious English architect (1632-1723) to oversee its rebuilding? His
elegant vision for the structure, including its magnificent dome, survived the fierce
opposition of a royal committee, and he saw the project to completion in the relatively
short time of 35 years. A devout Protestant, he made the pulpit the focal point of the
cathedral’s interior.

June 23 — Thomas Malthus
The demographic theories of this 19th-century English clergyman (1766-1834) led
many to believe overpopulation was the deepest source of the world’s woes? In An
Essay on the Principle of Population, he dismissed charity as counterproductive and
actually welcomed disease and plague as nature’s way of redressing the imbalance
between the unwashed masses and an inadequate food supply. His modern disciples
are zealous for contraception and abortion around the globe.

June 28 — Fourteen Points
With the end of World War I in 1918, Woodrow Wilson did all he could at home and
abroad to advance his comprehensive peace proposal known by this title (it names
the number of its provisions)? The proposal included not only the formation of a
league of nations but such things as an end to all secret diplomacy as well as all trade
barriers among countries. Wilson’s notions can be seen as either ahead of their time or
hopelessly naive and unrealistic.

June 30 — the Welsh
Several claims to the discovery of America predating that of Columbus have been
advanced, including one involving an expedition party of this European people led by
Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd around 1200 AD? Cherokee legends made the claim, as did
American artist George Catlin in his North American Indians (1841). Catlin figured the
lighter-skinned, blue-and-grey-eyed Mandan Sioux he saw were likely descended in
part from the Europeans.

Mystery — (Tabletalk magazine daily lessons, June 27-30)
This New Testament term refers not to something inscrutable or impossible to
understand, but to doctrine that was revealed only vaguely to Old Testament Israel in
anticipation of greater enlightenment in the era of Christ and His apostles? As St.
Augustine memorably put it, “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New
revealed.” When used in connection with the Gospel, the term refers to God’s purpose
in Christ to save His people from all nations, and not merely from ethnic Israel.