by John Stamps
“My little children, guard yourselves from idols.”
(1 John 5:21)
The US is not and never has been secular. We are awash with gods. Gods and goddesses surround us. The whole universe is filled with deities. We think we Americans live in a secular world and a secular nation. We don’t. The bogeyman of secularism haunted us, but rank idolatry stalked our blind side. We imagine we live in a disenchanted world—the gods of old vanished. No, they did not. The old gods—Moloch, Baal, Mars, or Eros come to mind—simply re-appeared in different disguises. Fr Richard John Neuhaus was wrong. The Public Square has never been naked.1
Once upon a time, the famous German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) begat a whole generation of intellectual historians, philosophers, theologians, and so on, who fretted about Entzauberung. The German word literally means de-magic-ation, what we now call “disenchantment.” Weber prophesied the desacralization of the West and the decline of “religion.” He was also wrong. The pantheon is filled to capacity.2
Yes, Americans are deserting churches in record numbers. Even so, we’re not becoming “secular.” My favorite Augustinian philosopher wisely observed that everybody has a hungry heart. The self-declared “SBNR” crowd—spiritual but not religious—is growing in record numbers. Whatever we Christians are selling, they aren’t buying. But the SBNRs are not “secular” simply because they won’t darken the doors of our churches. The human heart still aches for God.3
Demythologizing the American gods
The novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman is the most important book on theology I have read in recent memory.4 It is Homer updated for the 21st century. The novel shook me out of my secularist dogmatic slumbers. It is based on a fantastic premise: what happens to old gods like Thor, Odin, Ēostre, Thoth, or Èṣù when their worshippers have moved to America and then died out? And who are these new American gods? Their names are familiar to us all.
- Technology.
- Media.
- Liberty.
- Globalization.
- Democracy.
- Capitalism.
One more truly important American god we know quite well. But he has changed his name many times over the centuries. Jesus named him “Mammon.” But we call him “Money.”
St Paul and the rest of the Bible begrudge false gods a weird semi-existence:
For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor 8:5-6)
The American gods live, move, and have their being only because we have created them in our own fallen image. We invented these gods and then we serve and worship them. When fed with human blood, they speak. What is surprising about the American gods is just how truly vulnerable and needy they are. Without regular transfusions of money, oil, and yes, human blood, the American gods would shrivel up and die.5
During the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, we pray that the Lord will deliver us from a destiny nasty, brutish, and short:
Ὑπὲρ τοῦ ρυσθῆναι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ πάσης θλίψεως, ὀργῆς, κινδύνου καὶ ἀνάγκης τοῦ Κυρίου δεηθῶμεν.
That we might be delivered from all Affliction, Wrath, Danger, and Necessity, let us pray to the Lord.
If I was an ancient Greek, I’d fear the goddess ἀνάγκη (Ananke) more than any other god. She weaves the implacable fates of all gods and all mortals on her remorseless loom. But as an American, we fear being chewed up in the maw of Capitalism. Industrialization and globalization have left untold misery to persons, cities, states, and nations in their wake. Capitalism tramples us without mercy or consideration. Our livelihoods can be ripped away from us by global forces beyond our control. If you give them a finger, they will take your entire arm. As we’ve been warned by better prophets than me, Capitalism dissolves everything solid into thin air. It baptizes greed as a virtue and transforms materialism into a sacrament. But as recent events have shown us, while Capitalism might be inexorable, there is nothing inevitable about it, to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
O Foolish Americans, Who Has Bewitched You?
If we want to understand why and how the American gods have so completely seduced us, we can turn to The Enchantments of Mammon by Eugene McCarraher. Reading McCarraher’s tour de force is a serious life commitment. The book is 800 pages. It is a brilliant economic and intellectual history of Capitalism in America. Fortunately we can summarize McCarraher’s entire argument in a single quote: “The world does not need to be re-enchanted, because it was never disenchanted in the first place.”
Page after page after page McCarraher describes how ministers and theologians, economists, captains of industry, and advertising executives worked to “enchant” the dismal business of Capitalism, economics, and the American empire. They succeeded all too well. Capitalism is the default American religion. We are enthralled by it and we cannot imagine any alternative. But there were those who begged to differ otherwise, who offered us a truly amazing countercultural witness. For example, William Blake famously vilified the forces of “Progress” that shoved people out of the commons into England’s “dark Satanic mills.” McCarraher lumps these critics of Capitalism under the general rubric of “Romanticism.” These “Romantic” voices from the past are an astonishing counterpoint to the enchantments of Mammon. McCarraher eloquently describes the glorious protests of:
- Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers
- Robert Southey
- John Muir
- Via Dutton Scudder
- William James
- Dorothy Day
- Lewis Mumford (probably McCarraher’s favorite)
But there are two serious flaws to McCarraher’s magnificent book. The first flaw is that McCarraher makes Capitalism sound more omnipotent than it really is. Come to find out that all kinds of things can topple the American gods. There is nothing inevitable about them.
- Democracy has proven to be more fragile than any of us ever realized. The full effects of the January 6 terrorist attack on the US Capitol are yet to be felt.
- Technology is surprisingly vulnerable. A coldsnap caused untold misery to millions of Texans when the power grid failed. State-sponsored hackers attacked a little-known technology service provider (also in Texas) called SolarWinds and exposed deep flaws in our nation’s security, despite the best security software that money can buy.
- Wall Street looks like an almighty god, but it is not. Reddit, GameStop. RobinHood, and short-sellers brought the stock market to its knees until panic and the SEC stepped in. Wall Street is also amazingly vulnerable to disease. Covid-19 posed a dire threat to Capitalism that was completely unexpected. Businesses failed left and right. Mom-and-Pop stores and restaurants simply vanished.
- In the financial crisis of 2008, we witnessed the near-collapse of financial institutions too big to fail (TBTF) and yet many of them did. If the Treasury Department had not propped up the system with trillions of dollars, Capitalism as you and I know it would have died a miserable death.
With the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight, McCarraher concedes too much power to Capitalism, way much more than it deserves. But in all fairness to McCarraher, the American gods looked pretty darn formidable in 2019. Not so much in 2021. To paraphrase St Paul, the American gods are weak, beggarly, and preposterous, like all principalities and powers. Every American god has one or more fatal flaws.
Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered
The second flaw is that Romanticism represents almost the entire load-bearing infrastructure in McCarraher’s criticism of Capitalism. The Diggers, the Arts and Crafts movement, Populism, and other protest movements do all the heavy lifting. McCarraher’s critics and friends alike ponder this Romantic critique of Capitalism. Is the Romantic movement the only viable alternative to Capitalism?
McCarraher’s conclusions disappointed me for two reasons. First, he needed to focus more on Jesus Christ and less on Romanticism. American Christians can be insouciant about the American gods for one crucial reason—Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross under Pontius Pilate but He is now risen from the dead on the third day. If death does not terrify us, the American gods have no hold over us. If we truly believe that Jesus is risen from the dead, we can bear witness that we are not enslaved to the principalities and powers, though they would try to persuade us otherwise.
Second, is there a genuinely viable alternative to consumer Capitalism? Sure there is. We call it “the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” There exists in space and time one community who is tutored by the Holy Spirit to bear faithful witness to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I suspect McCarraher doesn’t trust the church will prove to be “the community of character” that she needs to be. The church looks more like an all-too-willing collaborator than a courageous counterbalance to offset the forces of Capitalism.
Yes, it is certainly true that American churches have given in to craven fear. Yes, American churches try to serve God and Mammon, despite the stern warning of Jesus. Yes, American churches have sold their precious birthright to the Wall Street Journal for a meager bowl of ideological pottage. Even so, we have powerful resources ready-to-hand, in good working order, to form us and shape us in how to tell the truth.6 That is, we can speak and live the truth and boldly witness to the gospel; but it requires us to exorcize our parishes of the American gods. Whether we broker commercial real estate deals or we drive a taco truck, the church can train us to become faithful witnesses to the resurrection. We do not need to live our lives in fear. We do not need to opt out of society, to escape the world and its temptations. Ordinary Christians can live ordinary lives in the world with joy and courage because our identity is not from the world. God has freed us from the tyranny of the American gods by raising His Son Jesus from the dead on the third day.
We can go to church and feast lavishly on the sacraments, yes, for the life of the world. God has freed us to ponder Lewis Mumford, and also Wendell Berry7, and Jacques Ellul8 and Jim Forest too. We can imitate Dorothy Day or her Russian counterpart, Mother Maria Skobtsova. We can fast, we can pray, and we can give alms to the poor.
These simple acts of faithfulness are profoundly subversive to the principalities and powers. Our open hands and our open wallets testify that we are not governed by greed, anxiety, and fear. The threat of scarcity does not terrify us. We trust God’s promises of abundance and blessing and providence. We bear witness that the inexorable law of supply and demand does not rule our hearts. The mere sight of a homeless man or a bag lady does not frighten or repulse us. They are made in the very image of God and Jesus summons us to help them. What God has given us in His generosity, we do not need to protect with guns.
Finally, we can love our enemies. Loving our enemies is the most preposterous, impossible statement ever spoken. Unless of course Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead on the third day.
Our Lord Jesus Christ entrusted us with no power in this world except for faithful witness. But the principalities and powers tremble and shake before that testimony. For every American god amounts to nothing but lies and violence. Ultimately, they are impotent. Devotion to them grows only in darkness, out of lust, greed, and fear. “As the smoke vanisheth, so shalt Thou drive them away.” The American gods are merest smoke, without fire. They are a miasma, a foul stink. God arises and blows them away.
Footnotes
[1] The title of this article is my own riff on We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour. Thinking I was clever, I wanted to title it, “We have never been disenchanted.” Then I discovered Eugene McCarraher had already beaten me to the punch. His 2015 article was only the tasty appetizer he was cooking up for us. We had to wait until 2019 until the full feast. It was certainly worth the wait. Also see McCarraher’s article “You’re a Slave to Money, Then You Die,” as well as the Syndicate symposium on The Enchantments of Mammon.
[2] On the subject of Entzauberung, Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm’s The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences is the finest book I know of. Learning how Madame Marie Curie attended seances in fin-de-siecle Paris is easily worth the price of admission. As Josephson-Storm observes, by all rights she should not have been there. And yet there she was.
[3] Tara Isabella Burton describes the amazing lengths that Americans will go through to fill their restless hearts. It’s the finest spirituality—typically disguised as an exercise routine—that money can buy. Take up and read Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World.
[4] Read the novel. Ignore the television series on Starz.
[5] One of the most chilling lines in American Gods is “Liberty is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.”
[6] Stanley Hauerwas famously labels himself as a “high church Mennonite” or a “congregationalist with Catholic sensibilities,” because he can’t find an actual empirical church in which to situate his theology. By contrast, I’m reasonably happy being empirically Eastern Orthodox. And yet I realize I am speaking a dialect about “the principalities and powers” that is certainly unusual in Orthodox claims about the supposed “symphonia” between Church and State. But if we shake off Constantinianism, it’s certainly within our wheelhouse.
[7] “And it seemed that The War and The Economy were more and more closely related. They were the Siamese twins of our age, dressed alike, joined head to head, ready at any moment to merge into a single unified Siamese, when the crossed eyes of government should uncross. The War was good for The Economy.” (Jayber Crow, p. 273)
[8] “Thus when we claim to use money, we make a gross error. We can, if we must, use money, but it is really money that uses us and makes us servants by bringing us under its law and subordinating us to its aims. We are not talking only about our inner life; we are observing our total situation. We are not free to direct the use of money one way or another, for we are in the hands of this controlling power… That Mammon is a spiritual power is also shown by the way we attribute sacred characteristics to our money. (JS: it is the “almighty dollar” after all) The issue here is not that idols have been built to symbolize money, but simply that for modem man money is one of his “holy things.” Money affairs are, as we well know, serious business for modern man…. We understand then why money questions are not considered, in the Bible, as part of the moral order. They are actually part of the spiritual order.” (Money and Power, pp. 76-77)
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
With all respect, John, you oversimplify Eugene’s treatment of Romanticism and its significance in the book. Mind you, and conversely, I think you underestimate the degree to which Eugene (and others) are right in believing that a recovery of a truly Christian and sacramental view of material economy in modernity almost certainly must be a kind of Romanticism. Remember, certain defective late mediaeval and early modern forms of Christian thought are largely responsible for where we are now, and the Romantic resistance drew on antique and mediaeval streams from purer sources. What you regard as flaws in his book I regard as among its greatest strengths.
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Hi David,
I love love love Eugene McCarraher and I’ve reflected about his powerful book for months now. I just think he needs to talk more about Jesus Christ. Any solution to the problems of American Christianity begins and ends with His words and deeds and less with, say, Lewis Mumford.
Yes of course the Romantic ideals are powerful. They just don’t reflect the world I live in here in the Silicon Valley as a software technical writer. God hasn’t called me to live on Walden’s Pond though I’d settle for a condo in Maui. As an American Christian, I need to chop down the idols I find in my own life as Jesus Christ discloses them to me.
John
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Virtue signaling and ‘wokeness’ is another favorite false god of ours. Nothing new of course, but it has a peculiar manifestation this time around. Andrew Sullivan calls attention to its distortions: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/when-the-narrative-replaces-the-news-9ea
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I see that my comment has been removed—which is interesting: one can’t register pithy disagreement on this site?—so let me be less succinct. Is wokeness just a word that the right uses to describe opposition to racism and misogyny? Yes. Is Andrew Sullivan a racist fool? Yes (not necessarily in this piece, but his past should not inspire confidence in his judgment). Virtue signaling is a real fault, but it’s hardly limited to the “woke.” Nor is it a false god.
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Michael I agree with Sullivan’s assessment in this mad and dangerous rush to further an agenda – a rush in which facts be damned because the end justifies whatever omission of fact or serviceable lie one can conjure. Furthermore, my reading is that this blind-to-the-facts-of-the-matter madness is not virtuous at all. On the contrary it furthers misappropriation, misinformation, false narratives, a disregard for truth; it is a false god for which ends justify the means. This false idol which must be resisted and called out for the twisted demon that it is, a whited sepulcher with rotten corpses within.
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Yes indeed, a man kills six Asian women, and the “false god” is the one conjured by those who see evidence of racism in his actions. I’m sure glad such sharp truth-tellers are on the job.
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Why don’t you actually read Sullivan and counter his argument based on the facts of the matter.
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Your baseless comment makes the perfect “Exhibit A” to Sullivan’s case. Nothing to see here. Move on, you have already made up your mind.
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My friend, if you think someone who argues a person can’t be racist because he has sex with people of that race is worth responding to, may I suggest you glance into any of about 200 volumes on the history of American race relations.
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Again, your comment demonstrates you have not read or else fatally misunderstand the argument Andrew Sullivan furthers in his referenced article. I will not respond to your trollish comments any further unless substantial cognitive improvement has been shown on your part.
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I agree with the broad sentiment that so-called ‘wokeness’ can sometimes go a bit far and interpret evidence too loosely. In addition the tendency to rush to judgment against those who have erred – particularly for errors that occurred in the distant past – is distasteful. And, while racism is legion in our society, it is bad journalism to assume that absolutely every crime where a non-white person is a victim must automatically be a racist attack. The facts matter.
However I have to say Andrew Sullivan indeed regularly expresses racist ideas and it is very, very disappointing to see him being linked to on this site of all places.
This particular article is by no means one of Sullivan’s worst, although even this piece clearly appeals to a racist trope here:
“But notice how CRT (Critical Race Theory) operates. The only evidence it needs it already has. Check out the identity of the victim or victims, check out the identity of the culprit, and it’s all you need to know. If the victims are white, they don’t really count”
Here Sullivan is claiming that advocates of CRT – aka civil rights activists – don’t care about white people. Yes, white people are the victims in all this. I hope it is obvious to all readers that this is a racist claim. Although if you’re not convinced, a quick google will reveal far more obvious and less nuanced racism from Sullivan.
As for the rest of the article, I’d like to point out that the below quotes which, while not exactly racist, are certainly foolish, and make you wonder why the author is so willing to utilise such bad arguments to support his claims:
“None of them mentioned that he killed two white people as well”
This is incorrect as some of them do mention this. I guess the facts don’t matter after all!
“None of them mentioned that he killed two white people as well — a weird thing for a white supremacist to do — and injured a Latino”.
The idea that it would be weird for a white supremacist to kill white people is an ignorant statement, given white supremacists regularly do this. There are at least 3 very obvious reasons for why this happens: 1) the particular white people in question are viewed as ‘collaborators’ or ‘sympathisers’ etc. with the hated race 2) they are not killed gleefully, but judged by the perpetrator to be the necessary cost of achieving the racist aim; or 3) plain accident. If the facts matter, why does Sullivan ignore this?
“None explained why, if he were associating Asian people with Covid19, he would nonetheless expose himself to the virus by having sex with them, or regard these spas as “safer” than other ways to have quick sex.”
This is poor reasoning, as it is obviously possible for someone to hold to the racist view that Asian people are ‘to blame’ for Covid (on the basis that the virus originated in China) and perhaps are ‘dirty’ in general, while nevertheless not actually believing that US-based Asians are any more likely to have Covid. Alternatively one could believe all this, but still visit such ‘spas’, given humans often have illogical or contradictory motives.
“But it sure complicates the “white supremacy” case that the mainstream media simply assert as fact.”
Right, ‘the mainstream media’ asserts white supremacy as fact. How Trumpian can you get?
I am very sorry to get into the weeds of the article in this post, particularly as I am in broad agreement with the idea that modern journalism, both left and right, frequently doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. But I am genuinely shocked that an article by Sullivan – a long-time peddler of racist bilge and false narratives, a master of misinformation and plain dumb arguments that ignore the facts – would be used to illustrate the point.
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It doesn’t really matter if this deranged man was racist or not (in the end, if you are getting riddled with bullets does it matter whether the person hates you because of your race or out of his mania at being unable to live according to chasity, and seeing you as the personifaction of that, or both, either way you are dying in agony just as much). All this talk is avoiding the fact of why those poor women where there, trapped in that ‘business’ in the first place, entrapped to service the whims of those who come in to use them, abuse them and then to cast aside (assuming their escape alive) when their serve their purpose.
Most in these areas most of the women and men who do this don’t do it willingly and are under various levels of coercion from poverty, desperation, econonmic structures, being immiergrates, and many are actually enslaved women trafficed in to serve demand. And of course, the demand is marketed and increased, leading to whole new avenues of international global suppliers feeding those demands, new and large networks, games and so on. Slavery is very much live and well around our world, and the system we are talking about keeps it and puts in place. Souls are bring brought and sold all around us, all the serve the almighty Mammon (under the dollar, pound, or whatever currency you want). Take my neck of the woods, because of the legalisation of prostitution, huge demand rose throughout Europe, mega-brothels rose in Germany and elsewhere, changes in law in the UK lead to unsurges in demand here. The result, that flesh had to come from somewhere, huge and interconnect criminal networks supply this need, they dominate throughout Eastern Europe, and the human traffic network from North Africa into Italy. In Romania they dominate the country, kidnapping girls with impunity, hooking them on drugs and sending them westward to live out what remains of their days serving the whims of the ‘putters’. Going the police is useless, and often dangerous, they are brought and paid for, they serve the gangs and shut down any attempt to help find these girls. THe same happens to girls trafficed in from the nightmare worlds of Lybia and the Middle East, Africa such as Congo, what is supposed to be an escape is just being sold into yet another hell. Gehenna is all around us, you just need to look.
Even for those sources still face pressure that leads them into these situations, brothels, porn, strip bars, escorts, OnlyFans (here girls end up having to get ever more extreme to attrack what little attention there is, Capitalism in action of course, right and left both proud here, free expresson and GDP both served here). For the few who it ‘works’ for, there his the vast and terrible debris of used and abused out there, hurting and herded into this hellhole.
And of course both sides would like to focus on this guy, the ‘right’ because they don’t want to look that very ecnomic and relgious system they have championed for all along (after all, they will talk allot about family values and being for families, but do everything to make sure families are damaged econmically, afterall they don’t serve the great GDP) and the left support ‘sex work is work’ so they aren’t really going to talk about it much either. They certainly aren’t going attack it the source of the evil, and in the end for them to GDP must be served, two mouths of the same master. I imagine soon sex work will be offered to the poor and struggling, and if they don’t take it, well no benefits or aid for them, after all, if sex work is work, well they refused to do work, and indeed here in the UK some universities have already provided sex kits and seminars advising students how to do ‘sex work’ and what’s legal, what’s not, how best to make money (and thereby pay the universities their money). Perhaps it’s only a matter of time, no doubt immigrate women who a poor and have little voice will also be asked (or rather demanded) to do this, and everything will become legal.
In relation to that in light of the event you can read this ladies view:
https://www.lavyshwan.com/post/sex-work-isn-t-work-for-most-of-us
And the same thing is happening with surrogacy, where women are trapped in rooms with 10 or more of them, kept prisoner to produce children for the increasingly lucrative market, to service rich couples, see that here for a increasingly typical experience:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1218835.shtml
This is the more pertinent issue, those women were forced by the vampiric demands of these ‘gods’ into this life, and this vunerblity. It is anti-Christ, it’s Gehenna, and largely few are going to say much about it. What this insane man did was horrific, but what lies behind it and over it, driving it all, is what should draw all Christians attention. But we don’t, we have all served the same system, we are all guilty, the blood is on all our hands.
Christ have mercy of them them, on him, and and us. And may we start to wake up, and start to leave it and form something the counter it, to be light, life and victory in hell. There are people everywhere crying out for us, and it’s Christ who is calling to us, do we see Him, or are we already judged as children of the devil (and I’m saying this to myself, I’m as much of hypocrite if not worse than anyone reading this).
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>> unless substantial cognitive improvement has been shown on your part.
Congratulations on having won the race to the bottom. If you’d care to google my books & essays, we can discuss where I might begin my “cognitive improvement.”
I read that silly, ignorant article, every word. Me just too dumb to get how wokeness is tearing the country asunder. It’s insidious that way.
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>>The idea that it would be weird for a white supremacist to kill white people is an ignorant statement, given white supremacists regularly do this.
You’re quite right, of course, David, just as racists have often coupled with people belonging to the so-called “race” they despise, but facts don’t matter to people like Sullivan or our friend Robert.
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Robert, I’d suggest that dismissing people as trolls is needlessly inflammatory and not justified in this instance. This is obviously a political area you feel strongly about – to be honest it really seems like something has gotten under your skin on this, which surprises me – but I fear you are acting a little rashly here. You could engage with Michael’s points but instead you are saying quite unhelpful things like:
“Why don’t you actually read Sullivan”
“Your baseless comment”
“Nothing to see here. Move on, you have already made up your mind.”
“your comment demonstrates you have not read or else fatally misunderstand the argument”
“unless substantial cognitive improvement has been shown on your part.”
I think it would be more helpful if you attempted to explain exactly how Michael’s point betrays a misunderstanding of the argument, rather than just asserting that it does. Even if you think that it is obvious, in my opinion it is disrespectful to tell someone that they have misunderstand something, but not tell them how and why.
In particular, Michael’s last point that “My friend, if you think someone who argues a person can’t be racist because he has sex with people of that race is worth responding to, may I suggest you glance into any of about 200 volumes on the history of American race relations” is, in my opinion, a perfectly fair and cogent point to make, and I’m not sure why you dismiss it as trolling. This is why it is fair and cogent: Sullivan does indeed argue that the fact that the perpetrator had sex with these women is something which his opponents who suspect a racist motive need to ‘explain’, but this is false. For example Sullivan states:
“None explained why, if he were associating Asian people with Covid19, he would nonetheless expose himself to the virus by having sex with them, or regard these spas as “safer” than other ways to have quick sex”
I have said more in my previous comment, but it seems pretty uncontroversial to assert that someone can be racist and believe that Asians are in some way responsible for Covid-19, while still being willing to have sex with them. Sullivan however clearly implies that this is a fact which needs explaining, and constitutes evidence that this was not a racist attack. But this is false, because having sex with a certain race has nothing to do with whether or not one is racist. Yes, this is not absolutely essential to Sullivan’s wider point that the media and people in general are sometimes guilty of pursuing an agenda without evidence. But it is still a bad argument, and a piece that is filled with similar bad arguments does not inspire confidence.
Anyway, I don’t actually disagree with the broad argument that *sometimes* people let their agenda dictate their understanding of the evidence. But it works both ways and, to my mind, that is exactly what Sullivan is doing in this piece. It suits his agenda – i.e. the agenda that a large number of theories of structural racism are in fact false and amount to people overinterpreting the evidence – to claim that the media is rife with such false narratives. However in his alleged examples of this he also ‘overinterprets’ the evidence, as he makes a number of unsuccessful arguments in this article by misreading the evidence.
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David, the question is not if it is possible for the killer to be a racist (yes, of course it is possible) – the point Sullivan makes is that there aren’t any established facts available that would demonstrate that these killings were done by racist motivations (they may well have been, but this has not been established), nor that *this event in particular* – ipso facto we are to believe – demonstrates there’s a rise of systemic racism against Asians. This event in any case shouldn’t be used to make that argument, and certainly not until the facts are known. The way this horrific event is utilized en masse, knee jerk fashion, is that here’s yet another case that obviously demonstrates that racism against Asians is on the rise. Really now? I think Sullivan’s post draws attention to this narrative pushing, rush to judgment, virtue signaling. How else to explain these numerous articles published not even 24 hours after the event which conclude that the killings indicate rise are in racist crimes?
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Yes, & to be perfectly clear on that point, since it was strangely dismissed: Sullivan is presumably aware that slaveholders often had sex with their slaves. Are we to infer that they were not, er, racist? I mean, his whole argument—like all his arguments—operates at this level of forehead-slapping obliviousness.
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Robert, as part of that argument Sullivan adduces the fact that the killer had sex with Asians, to undermine the thesis that the murders reflect anti-Asian racism. I pointed out that this is an absurd argument that is belied by, you know, the entire history of racism. You told me to stop trolling & actually read the article. May I ask, delicately, are you sure you have read it?
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“the media often doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good story. But I contend that they are nowhere near as prevalent as Sullivan suggests” Perhaps so David, but it seems not so to me. It’s difficult to explain away NY Time’s 9 articles which cast this event as a white supremacist, anti-Asian hate crime. Or the Washington Post’s 16 articles. There’s likely many more since Sullivan published his piece.
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Hi Robert. Again I get that you feel passionately about this but I’d encourage you to reflect further on the arguments which have been put forward, rather than clinging to the unargued assertion that your critics just aren’t reading or understanding you or Sullivan, and to the uncharitable claim that no substantive points have been made.
I’ll summarise into individual numbered points, just so that you are clear that I am indeed making points and that each one is separate and carries its own arguments:
1. Most of the articles are clearly talking about structural racism, not necessarily personally-motivated racism. Many do also suggest personal racism must surely be a motive, yes. But it would be wrong to read all of them as saying this. Sullivan does not appeal to this distinction at all and ignores the fact that some of the articles simply do not hold that the case for personal racism is proven. This appears to be an example of the very ‘rushing to judgment’ that he condemns and constitutes twisting the evidence to fit his agenda.
2. For those articles that do suggest personal racism, almost all of them are clearly *not* saying this constitutes evidence of rising race crime. Most of them give separate, statistical and cultural, arguments for rising racism, and point at this particular case as being *likely* *illustrative* of the phenomenon and something we should not ignore. Again, Sullivan is twisting the evidence to fit the agenda (or perhaps just hasn’t bothered to read them properly), and I’d suggest you take the time to read them in more detail, rather than just assuming that this is what these articles say because it fits your agenda to do so.
(as an aside I’d like to add that, at least here in the UK, from my work in government I happen to know that the majority (85%+) plus of violent crimes perpetrated by whites against non-whites do indeed have racist motivations and are classified as such. So it is actually pretty reasonable to conclude that crimes by whites against Asians are likely racist in motivation because, statistically, they usually are)
3. As I have pointed out in more detail in a previous post, Sullivan’s article is filled with non-sequitors. Sullivan argues that this particular case may not be driven by racism. Fine – so far, so obvious. But he clearly also argues that the fact the perpetrator also killed a white person, and that he had sex with Asians, constitutes evidence that the attacks were not racist. These are self-evidently absurd arguments (comparable to sexist claims that a woman not being dressed ‘appropriately’ constitutes evidence that it is less likely that she was raped) and clearly do not inspire confidence in Sullivan’s wider case. This time it’s twisting logical to fit the agenda.
4. It is one thing to highlight the bland truth that the media clearly oversteps the facts in certain cases. It does. But Sullivan’s piece suggests that this problem is rampant and mostly limited to the left, which I’m afraid taps into the right-wing meme that most of the left’s complaints about racism are fanciful and constitute merely self-righteous ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘woke’. No doubt there is self-righteousness on the left (that is just fallen human nature) but this kind of culture wars dismissal of accusations of racism is itself just another form of structural racism and it is inexcusable to defend it. This idea is used to shut down legitimate criticism of racism all the time, and therefore criticising people you disagree with as ‘woke’ requires extreme caution if you want to avoid unwittingly turning a blind eye to actual racism. Sullivan even argues that “the mainstream media asserts white supremacy as fact” – here Sullivan is appealing to another racist idea that the MSM has a huge non-white bias and uniformly preaches that we are in the grip of white supremacism. I’m afraid that, despite a few pockets of sanity, that is pretty much the opposite of what much of the media preaches – again, twisting the evidence to suit his purposes.
5. I hold that Sullivan’s article clearly appeals to a racist trope, as I have previously set out (he claims without evidence that Critical Race Theorists hold that, “If the victims are white, they don’t really count” – that is a slanderous and racist statement. It is saying that those who ac
This should worry you more than it does – the fact you haven’t engaged on this point in particular is unfortunate. Sullivan also has a wider history of denying racism and routinely dismisses suggestions that US is a racist society (in doing so he uses strawmen like claiming that the left claims that the US was set up as a deliberate ‘white-supremacist project’, which it does not, because the left (generally) recognises that acknowledging structural racism in society does not mean you think that everybody is secretly an evil racist or that the system has been deliberately designed to be racist).
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The fact that you have chosen not to engage with *any* of these points is unhelpful and does not inspire confidence in your case. The only point you have made (outside your initial post) is that “the question is not if it is possible for the killer to be a racist” and that “this event in any case shouldn’t be used to make that argument” [i.e. that racism is on the rise] – I totally agree, but I’m afraid this only addresses an argument that I have not made and, as points 1 and 2 argue, is not something most of the articles make either.
You have not addressed any of the other substantive points raised and instead demand that your critics “actually read Sullivan” and claim that they “have not read or else fatally misunderstand the argument” and claim that all their comments are “baseless”. You then used unkind and frankly vile language against Michael where you stated that you would not engage with him until “substantial cognitive improvement has been shown on [his] part.”
Personally I am about as far from ‘woke’ as you can get and I agree that self-righteousness is a problem across the political spectrum. I agree that the media is over the top and often rushes to judgment without cause, left and right. But it doesn’t really matter whether or not you or I agree with the general point that the media sometimes exaggerate and let their agenda over-interpret the evidence. That is beside the point – ultimately you are using intemperate language to defend an article filled with non-sequitors and racist tropes, by a man who is known for taking the reasonable claim that the media sometimes tell porkies and extrapolating beyond that to wrongly and racistly imply that such issues are almost exclusively the domain of the ‘left’ media and that the majority of accusations of racism are just ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘woke’.
Basically, if someone wants to illustrate a point, they have a moral obligation not to do so by appealing to an article that includes racist tropes from a writer that consistently downplays actual racism.
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Robert, I’d refer you both to the distinction between personal racism and structural racism in my earlier comment, which is key to understanding most of the articles I’ve seen on the subject. I’d also add that most of the articles I’ve seen clearly view this incident as being likely illustrative of separately-argued-for rises in racism, rather than actually being used to establish a case for a rise in racism. I agree completely that such fall narratives do exist sometimes and are unhelpful – as I’ve stated, the media often doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good story. But I contend that they are nowhere near as prevalent as Sullivan suggests, and that therefore Sullivan’s article itself is therefore a prime example of such a ‘false narrative’ – we are told that the media is rife with such false narratives (mostly on the left it seems from Sullivan’s chosen examples, hmm), but the evidence provided is so poor and the arguments so filled with faulty reasoning, that Sullivan’s article becomes mostly empty assertion. It’s just pushing an agenda – one that sounds plausible enough – with only bad arguments and implications, not well-reasoned thought and hard evidence.
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Hi Robert. Again I get that you feel passionately about this but I’d encourage you to reflect further on the arguments which have been put forward, rather than clinging to the unargued assertion that your critics just aren’t reading or understanding you or Sullivan, and to the uncharitable claim that no substantive points have been made.
I’ll summarise into individual numbered points, just so that you are clear that I am indeed making points and that each one is separate and carries its own arguments:
1. Most of the articles are clearly talking about structural racism, not necessarily personally-motivated racism. Many do also suggest personal racism must surely be a motive, yes. But it would be wrong to read all of them as saying this. Sullivan does not appeal to this distinction at all and ignores the fact that some of the articles simply do not hold that the case for personal racism is proven. This appears to be an example of the very ‘rushing to judgment’ that he condemns and constitutes twisting the evidence to fit his agenda.
2. For those articles that do suggest personal racism, almost all of them are clearly *not* saying this constitutes evidence of rising race crime. Most of them give separate, statistical and cultural, arguments for rising racism, and point at this particular case as being *likely* *illustrative* of the phenomenon and something we should not ignore. Again, Sullivan is twisting the evidence to fit the agenda (or perhaps just hasn’t bothered to read them properly), and I’d suggest you take the time to read them in more detail, rather than just assuming that this is what these articles say because it fits your agenda to do so.
(as an aside I’d like to add that, at least here in the UK, from my work in government I happen to know that the majority (85%+) plus of violent crimes perpetrated by whites against non-whites do indeed have racist motivations and are classified as such. So it is actually pretty reasonable to conclude that crimes by whites against Asians are likely racist in motivation because, statistically, they usually are)
3. As I have pointed out in more detail in a previous post, Sullivan’s article is filled with non-sequitors. Sullivan argues that this particular case may not be driven by racism. Fine – so far, so obvious. But he clearly also argues that the fact the perpetrator also killed a white person, and that he had sex with Asians, constitutes evidence that the attacks were not racist. These are self-evidently absurd arguments (comparable to sexist claims that a woman not being dressed ‘appropriately’ constitutes evidence that it is less likely that she was raped) and clearly do not inspire confidence in Sullivan’s wider case. This time it’s twisting logical to fit the agenda.
4. It is one thing to highlight the bland truth that the media clearly oversteps the facts in certain cases. It does. But Sullivan’s piece suggests that this problem is rampant and mostly limited to the left, which I’m afraid taps into the right-wing meme that most of the left’s complaints about racism are fanciful and constitute merely self-righteous ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘woke’. No doubt there is self-righteousness on the left (that is just fallen human nature) but this kind of culture wars dismissal of accusations of racism is itself just another form of structural racism and it is inexcusable to defend it. This idea is used to shut down legitimate criticism of racism all the time, and therefore criticising people you disagree with as ‘woke’ requires extreme caution if you want to avoid unwittingly turning a blind eye to actual racism. Sullivan even argues that “the mainstream media asserts white supremacy as fact” – here Sullivan is appealing to another racist idea that the MSM has a huge non-white bias and uniformly preaches that we are in the grip of white supremacism. I’m afraid that, despite a few pockets of sanity, that is pretty much the opposite of what much of the media preaches – again, twisting the evidence to suit his purposes.
5. I hold that Sullivan’s article clearly appeals to a racist trope, as I have previously set out (he claims without evidence that Critical Race Theorists hold that, “If the victims are white, they don’t really count” – that is a slanderous and racist statement. It is saying that those who ac
This should worry you more than it does – the fact you haven’t engaged on this point in particular is unfortunate. Sullivan also has a wider history of denying racism and routinely dismisses suggestions that US is a racist society (in doing so he uses strawmen like claiming that the left claims that the US was set up as a deliberate ‘white-supremacist project’, which it does not, because the left (generally) recognises that acknowledging structural racism in society does not mean you think that everybody is secretly an evil racist or that the system has been deliberately designed to be racist).
—
The fact that you have chosen not to engage with *any* of these points is unhelpful and does not inspire confidence in your case. The only point you have made (outside your initial post) is that “the question is not if it is possible for the killer to be a racist” and that “this event in any case shouldn’t be used to make that argument” [i.e. that racism is on the rise] – I totally agree, but I’m afraid this only addresses an argument that I have not made and, as points 1 and 2 argue, is not something most of the articles make either.
You have not addressed any of the other substantive points raised and instead demand that your critics “actually read Sullivan” and claim that they “have not read or else fatally misunderstand the argument” and claim that all their comments are “baseless”. You then used unkind and frankly vile language against Michael where you stated that you would not engage with him until “substantial cognitive improvement has been shown on [his] part.”
Personally I am about as far from ‘woke’ as you can get and I agree that self-righteousness is a problem across the political spectrum. I agree that the media is over the top and often rushes to judgment without cause, left and right. But it doesn’t really matter whether or not you or I agree with the general point that the media sometimes exaggerate and let their agenda over-interpret the evidence. That is beside the point – ultimately you are using intemperate language to defend an article filled with non-sequitors and racist tropes, by a man who is known for taking the reasonable claim that the media sometimes tell porkies and extrapolating beyond that to wrongly and racistly imply that such issues are almost exclusively the domain of the ‘left’ media and that the majority of accusations of racism are just ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘woke’.
Basically, if someone wants to illustrate a point, they have a moral obligation not to do so by appealing to an article that includes racist tropes from a writer that consistently downplays actual racism.
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Michael, I deleted your previous comment because it was an insult and only an insult. There was nothing pithy or substantive about it.
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“Oh please” is not technically an insult, but I’ll grant you it’s not pithy.
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Now you know my expectations. You are not the first person to have a comment deleted nor will you be the last. I trust I will not have to delete any of your future comments. My house, my rules.
Pithiness is always welcome. Substance even more so.
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Thank you Robert! How refreshing to read a columnist who still believes that facts matter!
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I agree with the broad sentiment that so-called ‘wokeness’ can sometimes go a bit far and interpret evidence too loosely. In addition the tendency to rush to judgment against those who have erred – particularly for errors that occurred in the distant past – is distasteful. And, while racism is legion in our society, it is bad journalism to assume that absolutely every crime where a non-white person is a victim must automatically be a racist attack. The facts matter.
However I have to say Andrew Sullivan indeed regularly expresses racist ideas and it is very, very disappointing to see him being linked to on this site of all places.
This particular article is by no means one of Sullivan’s worst, although even this piece clearly appeals to a racist trope here:
“But notice how CRT (Critical Race Theory) operates. The only evidence it needs it already has. Check out the identity of the victim or victims, check out the identity of the culprit, and it’s all you need to know. If the victims are white, they don’t really count”
Here Sullivan is claiming that advocates of CRT – aka civil rights activists – don’t care about white people. Yes, white people are the victims in all this. I hope it is obvious to all readers that this is a racist claim. Although if you’re not convinced, a quick google will reveal far more obvious and less nuanced racism from Sullivan.
As for the rest of the article, I’d like to point out that the below quotes which, while not exactly racist, are certainly foolish, and make you wonder why the author is so willing to utilise such bad arguments to support his claims:
“None of them mentioned that he killed two white people as well”
This is incorrect as some of them do mention this. I guess the facts don’t matter after all!
“None of them mentioned that he killed two white people as well — a weird thing for a white supremacist to do — and injured a Latino”.
The idea that it would be weird for a white supremacist to kill white people is an ignorant statement, given white supremacists regularly do this. There are at least 3 very obvious reasons for why this happens: 1) the particular white people in question are viewed as ‘collaborators’ or ‘sympathisers’ etc. with the hated race 2) they are not killed gleefully, but judged by the perpetrator to be the necessary cost of achieving the racist aim; or 3) plain accident. If the facts matter, why does Sullivan ignore this?
“None explained why, if he were associating Asian people with Covid19, he would nonetheless expose himself to the virus by having sex with them, or regard these spas as “safer” than other ways to have quick sex.”
This is poor reasoning, as it is obviously possible for someone to hold to the racist view that Asian people are ‘to blame’ for Covid (on the basis that the virus originated in China) and perhaps are ‘dirty’ in general, while nevertheless not actually believing that US-based Asians are any more likely to have Covid. Alternatively one could believe all this, but still visit such ‘spas’, given humans often have illogical or contradictory motives.
“But it sure complicates the “white supremacy” case that the mainstream media simply assert as fact.”
Right, ‘the mainstream media’ asserts white supremacy as fact. How Trumpian can you get?
I am very sorry to get into the weeds of the article in this post, particularly as I am in broad agreement with the idea that modern journalism, both left and right, frequently doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. But I am genuinely shocked that an article by Sullivan – a long-time peddler of racist bilge and false narratives, a master of misinformation and plain dumb arguments that ignore the facts – would be used to illustrate the point.
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As much as I dislike Trump and the theopolitical whores who surround(ed) him, and as much as that golden statue makes me want to puke, I have to tell you that the photo you are using is a fake, altered from the original. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/03/03/fact-check-photo-evangelicals-praying-over-trump-statue-fake/6903436002/
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Yes, of course it’s photoshopped. I suspect most folks have seen the original. I just couldn’t resist when I saw it. 🙂
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Well, it is a bit of a hoot, I will grant you that, and really, there is not much difference in attitude demonstrated between the original and the fake.
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I agree with DBH above sense in your relation to McCarraher’s treatment of Romanticism, and also agree I thought it seems clear he is advocating for a recovery of Christian sacramental view of reality in our socio-economic life and that Romantic resistence largerly represented this since.
His outlining of John Ruskin distinction between ‘wealth’ that which enriches human life and causes it to flourish, and ‘illith’ that which deforms and ruins life should be the core of all economic thinking and planning is right no the money (pun intended 😉 ). That romantics such as Ruskin should be central to our economy but aren’t because of the hetrodox Christianity that ruled the US and the West for around 200 years at least, to it’s final apotheosis in neo-liberalism. And money is the exchange of that sacrament, one of it’s achievements I definitely argee with you, as I was talking earlier with the novelist Richard here, is that we have never been disenchanted just that the enchanted, sacramental system and ineraction became twisted, and given other technical names.
Probably shows that a truly materalist system isn’t possible because humans aren’t built that way, and personally I would argue because reality isn’t materalist is why it’s impossible to live that way.
I also think the solution is allot more difficult than you suggest, it’s not just a matter of doing charity or giving alms, we, all of us shaped under the modern western empires of first Britain and France, and now the US’s imperium (I know US people don’t like to see themselves as a Empire, but heading an imperial rule, with phrases such as leaders of the free world, and Biden promising to restore the US’s place in the world, with the pretence of not really heading an empire simply underlines the new neo-imperial style that others such as China as learnt from and are implementing themselves) have lead Capitalism to shape and form who we are for generations. And to be honest, reading his book I see Marxism as simply a species of Capitalism (and therefore say Communist China embracing state directed markets not as an abandoment or betray of it, just a development in that thinking), they are both part of this kind of twisted form of Christian sacramentalism with Mammon at the centre.
But back to the point, how we live, how it has shattered and changed property, workers, created the whole managerial-professional class, the new priesthood, shamans and clerics, films, advertising, media, internet, now social media, we are shaped to this machine and Mammon, we sacrifice and enchange to it every day, kill for it, and it shapes our lives, social structures, frames of references, how we make and earn our livings (or don’t), and lurches us on to potential socio and ecological degredation.
Most ideas are about accomdating the beast, changing this or that, but not really doing anything about it’s fundemental anti-Christian (indeed anti-Christ) issues, because all Christians and churches have made it part of how they live and do their business. That doesn’t seem likely to change.
Sure you can attempt to kick Constaninism out of the Orthodox Churches and similar integralists views in Catholic circles, but I suspect the problem lives far deeper and isn’t going to happen. In the US you got some mobilized to defeat Trump (and others to keep him in) on culture war issues, but nothing about challenging the modus operadi, the central faith of the US and the West (and really the global system) itself. The truth is even all those posing as radical leftists don’t really seek to change it, if anything their current obsessions seem to serve coperate culture, feltishisation and enchantment and faith, blostering it and making it more embedded and powerful than ever. If something good could be seen to come from Trump is that his was a revelation, a revealing of what always there, just now exposed without the right words and cloak, what actually lies behind the curtain (and nothing is different say here in the UK either, or in Europe, I can only hope at least some Christians, and Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddists and so on can have the insight to see it, and even others).
And would, or could, most Christians actually leave and turn from serving the coperate faith, the faith of the US in some ways since it’s first European settlers, and of the Western hegemony, is there really the aternate vision out there? I think McCarraher is pointing to Romanticism and similar is people possibly giving starting points, and using the deepest understanding and traditons and of both Christian and similar religious visions to put forward a radically different way of living and being, one advantage the Church (or churches) particulalry Catholic and Orthodox varieties could offer is the deeper and coherent wells for that thought to draw from, and to engage creatively with the Romantics past and into the present on this. I’m not particularly concerned with ‘right’ or ‘left’ divisions, that is an artifical and aribitary distinction in anycase, and modernist fiction that we sold into.
But would most of us be perpared to live in common, to say leave where we are and be part of community where all is held in common and given to those in need, ministering to the poor and needer, and perhaps forming community, work, art, craft in different ways? Could we all live like Dorothy Day or Mother Maria Skobtsova, not just admire them, but actually follow them? And could the Church and churches provide the means for that to happen? Could Christians return to a modern of how they were in the earliest centuries? For a community like St Gregory of Nyssa and his family?
Could we do what the rich man couldn’t, could we sell all we had and follow Christ? I ask this of myself to, because I think sadly, the answer is no. And that’s something we all need to face and deal with. Because until we say yes, we keep attempting to follow God and Mammon in our lives, and therefore, because we give it power, it and the ‘American gods’ are far from week.
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“But would most of us be perpared to live in common, to say leave where we are and be part of community where all is held in common and given to those in need, ministering to the poor and needer, and perhaps forming community, work, art, craft in different ways? Could we all live like Dorothy Day or Mother Maria Skobtsova, not just admire them, but actually follow them? And could the Church and churches provide the means for that to happen? Could Christians return to a modern of how they were in the earliest centuries? For a community like St Gregory of Nyssa and his family?”
When you say “community,” how big are we talking? And by “us” do you mean Christians or Americans? Because America seems irrevocably fractured to me. We cannot agree on even the most basic questions: What is a human being? Where do we come from? What is our purpose? Heck, sometimes we cannot even agree on answers to those questions *within* the Church.
I don’t think such a “community” is possible, let alone desirable, in a secular context. An uneasy truce between a plurality of metaphysical visions–with tolerance afforded to deviant views in accordance to whichever social customs and “manners” rule the current age–would seem to be the best-case scenario in my eyes. And yet that inevitably entails a form of capitalism, even if it’s harsher externalities are mitigated by more generous welfare policies. Goods cannot be held in common if we do not share the same vision of Goodness. Not for long, anyway. A true community is more than just a material economy, after all.
So no, I see no hope for America in that regard (or any secular nation-state for that matter). Thankfully there is always hope for the Church. But disentangling the Church from the mangled mess that is post-Christendom will itself be an arduous task. It would seem our generation has been catechized more so by pop culture, crude politics, and technology than anything else. I’m quite certain things will get much worse before they get better. But then again I’m a bit of a pessimist!
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I absolutely mean Christians here, this isn’t about saving a nation state, basically as St John Chrysostom has put it ‘I am a Christian. he who answers thus has declared everything at once – his country, progession, family; the believer belongs to no city on earth but to the heavenly Jerusalem.’ This is essential what I think we must utterly and radically embrace, we live in our societies, we must bring the love of the Kingdom to them and enrich it, but don’t belong to them, to their structures or anything like that. We are as St Paul puts it, ambassdors of Christ and of His Kingdom that isn’t of or from this world, we are heavenly colonia in this world. We are as was Acts shows people relating to Christians, followers of another King, another Lord. And I think we must embrace this more so than St John Chrysostom himself did, and take a lesson from our older brothers and sisters the Jewish people, that we are a seperate pilgrim nation, you enchanged your citizenship from this world, that nations of the Gentiles and it’s systems and should and I think must live radically differently.
We are a different people, the beginnings of the new Adam, and should live like and towards it, the point baptism it exactly this, yet we don’t do this, so that needs to change. At least a large section of us needs to, and in this find our brothers and sisters in simliar faith communities, which there are, basically yes, you are no longer American or British (and in that, English, Welsh, Scots, Cornish etc) and beyond, other than it being an inheritence, you aren’t and have no allegiance to that world at all, that aspect of Christendom West or East was a distortion and as should be kicked out (remove those flags from your churches while your at it ;), the Cross alone is your flag, the Crucified and Risen One your citizen card and oath). As pilgrims we must respect the human dignity and authority given as those in the image and likeness of God to reflect and coperately order the world (reflected variously in different societies and their imbedded institutions) but their are both not only imperfect but still both twisted by death and under principalties and powers that are enslaved to death. Romans places that respect within the confines of Christ’s already existing Lordship (from which as Logos human authority derives) and if it acts against it in extreme ways, it acts outside it’s authority, and in fact acts against human authority and freedom and in slavery to death. We are no way bound to obey it, while still respecting those representives as both humans and representives of human authority (see Christ debating with Pilate, crucifixion and execution is wrong and their act against and out of their authority to do it, God’s overturning of that is revelation of that amongst other things) as Christ says, render to Caesar what is Caesar, and God’s what is God’s, that is coins with Caesar’s image on belong to him, but humans belong to God, our entire selves are His, our communities are His (and thus subversively, our relationship, including how we economically interact is His, I don’t think it supports what people think it supports).
So anyway, long way to say, Christians, not Americans, nations rise and fall, come and go, we come from a family and background and bring it into the Church, but it’s governments or forms have no direct claim on us. We have not nation or kingdom but Christ’s, we need that fundemental understanding underlined and emphasised, and the life we live within the communities, societies, towns, cities and countryside is and should informed by that. Living within, towards, and for the poor and needy, for Christ, to bring to the extent we can to see the lives of those around us brought more towards the freedom He brings, advocate for peace, justice for aid, and to see that in our societies more is part the ambassadorial calling but not become part of it. Our first task is not to make more just, but to both reflect what the world currently is and what it should be,and can only do that as a distinct eschatological community, revealing the age to come to which is also already present. To reflect to the world of control, power, hostility, mistrust, fear, greed, injustice and hate itself while reflecting what humans are being called out of. The community should both be the alternative and healing approach, a life which is itself prophetic declaration, providing space to live and form towards a whole new community that is both hospital for damaged folk and patterning what it is in part and yet to come. And one which brings and serves (since we are a Kingdom of service, with our Servant King, towards all the people of the world, to provide a place for those in need to find help, aid and healing, and so ourselves). To be and reflect a whole different life towards others and the world.
It is a life that will be the work of peace and love, in which violence and injustice is seen as what is is, the breach and exception to that, to bring the real humanity to bear. This in a different craft, in feeding the poor, providing for the sick. For example say allot of Christians pooled their resources, whole hospitals, centres and a community geared towards providng that care and aid, training, it’s own craft directed by those who do it, both providing for itself, such as monastic living in times past and exchange with each other and for that position into the surrounding societies, arrangements of various kind need to be struck, as their were for example the Romantic communities, but if the Church and churches at large were coordinators for this, wholly different banking structures set up, potentially a wholly different systems could be set up, regionalised but having good coordination. Unlikely of course, and I think at the moment probably not going to happen (again, Churches are to imbedded in a idolatrous system, and serve and live it so this largely wild thinking here, because will Christians give all they have and follow Christ, most won’t let’s be honest, and certainly not those in leadership positions on the whole).
Of course peace is also that everyday work, courage in the face of the world informed by greed, cowardice and self-interest, of relationship and dependance, and on community. This is also a call to come out of and leave the idolatrous aspects we have allowed our lives and worship to fall into, to actually be and inform a radical new (or renewed) vision to be Christian coperatively. To be that community distinct, to also be that community that in idenfify with Christ, indenfies with qualification with the poor, the powerless, the needy, the desperate, and to embrace that powerlessness and throw away our defences (we don’t need them, Christ is Risen). Let’s live like the resurection people we claim to be.
We need to leave and be apart from that system that forces worship and sacramental interaction to and with Mammon, to worship that which deforms and destorys humans, makes them unhuman, a commodity to be used, sold, marketed and exploited. A resource and technology to serve the counterfit eschatological and beautide and theosis of the machine, of the total system of reality Capitalism places itself as. As I’ve said, this is hard because we’ve lived, moved and had our being in it, we might have given it a Christian face for Christians, but we cannot serve two masters, so we serve Mammon and the infernal counter-system at every level. Only be being and forming communties, in the cities and country, for the needy, looking at ways of holding and serving in common, reviving the ideas of common holding, of communties like St Macrina, the Anglo-Irish communities, Romantic communties but with the roots more in line with Dorothy Day or Mother Maria Skobtsova, or ealier Christians. But not isolated houses or just charity outlets but enfolded in larger even to us, monastic style communties, serving each other and people around us, and forming to extent we can the new way of life, to enable it to be entered into, to live and heal and conform us towards it.
Is this idealistic, sure, but we need that back, we need the vision back to then think of concrete ways to go about this. Take this tweet, I don’t really know who this person is, and I don’t know their political-social views (I saw it retweeted) but is shows some thinking:
The problem is, without the unifying understanding of reality (say provided by Christianity or Buddism, such communities don’t have the strength to survive, and unified understanding that holds together and secures as it did say with the long-term survival and sucess of monastism) it won’t succeed. But furthermore, take their idea, and extend it (we’ve just had talk and long debate about what happen to those caught and often trapped in abusive prostititution) to those trafficed, to those suffering and hurting, to be new hospitals and not just shelters but from there whole new places to live and find freedom and dignity whether they are Christian or not. A shared community which can help make those things happen. Monasticism as embedded communties transformed Europe, we should be showing that vision again, rather then being behind, a hour late and a dollar short as they say.
Christians to to the extent they can should as much as possible repudiate Capitalism and service to Mammon as much as possible, as a community as much as possible. If the churches as a whole would help begin and move this how much power it would be, but it would mean giving up much, coperately and personally, so I don’t see that happening. While we need a grand vision again, probably for now smaller communities and networks are all we begin to build. Smaller communties, seperate but engaged, linked together and united. It will probably have to be grass-roots and radical different experiments to find a find a way forward, new monastism, new St Anthonys. new St Cuthberts and so on, to build and unite things say like Catholic Workers with a larger life of Christians to live that way. To both live and witness to the world Christ in the midst of darkness, to be His aid, and throw away our protections we cling to. To at least begin to see and have that vision.
To come out of coperate culture, for say Apple which lobbies to keep bills from not using Ulyghur slave labour, from Disney which used land and thanked those running concentration camps in which they are tortured, indortinated and killed (of organ harvesting from them, Falun Gong, fellow Christians and so on) which uses, exploits and abuses people. Of a system of death, to be Way of Life to the world. Of course practical issues to avoid cult issues need to be careful considered (cult pesonaes, control, the Catholic scandal shows abusive structures, practical thought and protections need to be in place to counter these things all to easy to for).
Now is the time to think very creatively, to recognise where we are, and to again be light to the world, what we are called to be.
We don’t have a nation, Capitalism is a twisted form of Christian sacramental living, it is in that sense very much anti-Christ. I would even argue that Revelations can be read fruitfully in the sense of a revelation of that system that buys and sells souls, and of the Christian community of distinct from that, as with the Gospels and so on. Of creative retrivial of monastic communities, the Commons tradition, of that communalism (a true communism if you like in Christianity), of the Romantic traditions. There is much deep wells to go to and think from, and even learning from communties such as Amish, but to be than but engaged.
Now is the time to think radically, again, we aren’t directly called the change the world, but reflect prophetically to it, both show what is, and what people are called to be and to, to be ambassdors, and be Christ to the world. And to unifies with those brothers and sisters in other traditions who also see and walk alongside us (thus a big place for infer-faith dialogue and engagement).
And again, to recognise we have not citizenship but in Christ, we have no country but heavenly Jerusalem, we are pilgrims and refugees in the world, we are brought to and live for the world and age above, that is our loyalty (again, get those flags out your churches). We are not Capitalists, we are Christians, we have or should have nothing to do with that, what commerce is there between God and Mammon, what accord can be struck? None, we can’t follow both, we need to wake up and start choosing this day who we will follow, which we conform our lives too, which Kingdom we live according to. As Christ told us, we do not live and should not live as the Gentiles do, but as servants, to live towards love, peace and true freedom.
To live for wealth, not illith.
Let’s be Christians, and lets get creative and be that community of the Kingdom, to be Christ in our world.
Not sure if that answers you, and I admit right now concrete ways forward are difficult, but we desperately need renewed vision and from their to find startegies and ways forward, and to see just how much we have fallen under a anti-Christ system.
But as I said, I share some of your pessimism, even of myself, I think we are like the rich ruler, I don’t think most are prepared to give up Capitalism for Christ, to leave neo-liberalism. John has already indicated that sentiment above, not knocking him or attacking, just observing, in reply to DBH, which is why I think what he puts forward is a opiate, and will not do much good or bring any change. It’s why I think he doesn’t see get that in the different living is the way and centrality of Christ, and that such superfical observances and changes do little, and at large simply support and keep our loyalty towards a system that is directly antogonistic towards Christ, is a counterfit hetrodox heresy of the worst kind, and will keep most likely most Christians allegiance, or at least their acquiescence and submission, to serve the infernal machine at it’s own infernal beautitude. To use a Tolkien image, we have most of us all become Saruman.
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Without qualification with the poor I meant (probably lots of those typos, hope all can read through them).
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I don’t have much of substance to add to your excellent discussion, Grant! But I’ll try.
Recently I’ve become enamored of Wendell Berry’s Port William stories. But I grew up on a family farm in godforsaken Double Adobe AZ and couldn’t imagine for a nanosecond trying to eke out a living on a goat farm somewhere outside Mendocino. For the time being until Jesus Christ shows me otherwise, my intentional community is the 95126 area code.
My own resistance to Mammon must start closer to home, where I am rooted and where God has planted me. I am a technical writer in the Silicon Valley. Software developers and software managers are my peeps. So I have to think long and hard about what kind of public witness I offer as a disciple of Jesus.
Here are possible ways to show we are not enslaved to Mammon.
Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, give shelter to travelers, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead. These seven corporal acts of mercy are an excellent head-start to show Mammon has not bewitched us.
Bloom where you’re planted and be not easily moved.
Trust that every day God will show you what you need to do. It may have been “by chance” that the Good Samaritan passed by the man wounded by the side of the road but it was no accident.
Don’t carry a pistol unless you’re a policeman. N.B. My son is a policeman.
Don’t buy a rifle unless your name is Burley Coulter or you live in Port William KY or Double Adobe AZ.
Don’t buy an AR-15 ever.
Don’t be a racist. And if you discover that you are through painful experience, repent.
Buy a homeless person a meal. Sure, we can start at McDonald’s or Whole Foods on the Alameda. But we can do better. Take them to Applebee’s.
If you have a Joe Namath rookie card gathering dust in your closet, sell it and give the proceeds to Salvation Army.
Wear a mask. This has nothing to do with Mammon. It just shows you’re being a good human being.
This list is not perfect. I’m sure you have your own practical ways of dealing with Mammon in a consumer society.
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By ‘Capitalism’, do you refer to an economic system of free trade, or to corporatism, government, Republicanism, or just a favorable attitude towards mammon?
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Thank you for this helpful insight into the polytheism rampant in a nation that was supposedly founded to be a Christian nation or at least on Christian principles. I would add to what you have stated that all the tenets of the country’s founding document express a deistic worldview, implying that the supreme being who created the cosmos but subsequently abandoned all attention to it left open the opportunity for the founding fathers to divinely create their new world. I believe we should understand them not only as the founders of a country but also of a religion. The Constitution is filled with rights that promise liberty, coinciding with the image of the Roman goddess Libertas, after whom the Statue of Liberty was modeled. Then, shortly after George Washington’s death, the painting “The Apotheosis of Washington” was displayed at the capitol rotunda, where it can still be seen today. Washington is portrayed being welcomed into the heavenly realm to reign with a host of Roman gods and goddesses, with Libertas in the most prominent position. Therefore, the capitol building appears to proclaim George Washington and Libertas as the nation’s official gods. The Constitution, comprised of an outline of the founding fathers’ definition of liberty, seems to have paved the way to recognize its signers (or at least “the father of our country”) as having divine authority, even if subconsciously. The could explain why one of the few possible Christians of the bunch (Washington) would be subjected to postmortem deification, of which he probably would not have approved had he been told about the plan while he was alive.
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Oets Kolk Bouwsma – my favorite Dutch Calvinist philosopher – once claimed that he was “a small-thought thinker” and it took him a while to string together a bunch of small thoughts into a fairly decent “middle-sized thought.” I beg your indulgence. You have surfaced many good and provocative responses and I want to try and give responses that are equally thoughtful.
Have a blessed Lent, one and all!
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Does McCarraher offer any account, generally or in specific instances, for why no expression of Romanticism as the term seems to be used here — you could say instead I guess counter-cultural movements, whether religiously motivated or not — has ever succeeded? Because that’s the thing about Capitalism, especially when the term is used broadly as it seems to be here, meaning the entire hegemonic culture: it devours — or rebrands or otherwise accommodates — every critique of it. No one from John Milton to the Hippies has yet come close to unseating Capitalism or love of filthy lucre. Plenty of heroic efforts on a small scale, and even much larger scale movements. But Capitalism as a religion, as a faith, seems to have so far escaped effective refutation, even if its discontents and heretics have produced wonderful artistic and intellectual movements.
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Quite extensively so, his book tracks both these movements and their failures alongside the rise of Capitalism, particularly in the US (his focus, early chapters also focus for a while on the UK, but the US is then the focus from Protestant propery pecuniary conevantism to present neo-liberalism. But it’s so extensively dealt with, I can only really point you Jonathan and others to read the book.
It’s very much worth anyone’s time to read, to read how people who have shaped this system framed and saw their system and beliefs is eye-opening and hair rising (for me at least). But yes, it addresses the problems with various aspects of those movements (often members heading it often abandoned the movement and essentially joined the monsters). Though their enduring thread provides strength itself, I will also say, the bit about Disney was interesting, and I think Tolkien’s strong dislike of Disney might be rooted in the sense of something he was against stronger than he realised.
By yes, you need to read the book 🙂 .
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Ah, well, I suppose I may cease my incredibly clever attempts to get people to tell me what’s in the book.
I guess the book doesn’t touch on this, but do you think there’s any use in thinking of the Romantic movements and expressions and modes and whatnot that are or were poised against Capitalism in comparison to the various ascetical and mystical reforming movements in the pre-Reformation Church (all the way back to the advent of Christian monasticism)? To my mind, those too were efforts against a stifling hegemonic culture of worldliness, at first pagan and then Christian.
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I think that would be a place for quite fruitful thought and reflection, since in part this is what inspired such movements (some quite directly, beyond the broader medieval sacramental understanding and Christian derived commons, such as the Anglo-Catholic movements and monastic orders involved) and think say the community headed by St Macrina, St Basil and St Gregory, St Francis of Assisi (a big inspiration to a number) and thinking of say Irish and then Anglo-Irish monastism which at least early on were whole communties (comprised of people from all classes) both monks and lay at times that spread back into Europe (and pretty much saved classical cilivlisation in the West where due to economic collapse and war almost all texts (pretty fragile already and having lost tradition sponsors had been largely lost) were preserved in Ireland and than England reintroduced from Alcuin of York under Charlemagne’s renassance (when texts were copied from there. One of the many renassances in Western Europe (there was never just one).
Much craft was formed there craft wise as well (and a culture produced things like Beowulf, Kells and Lindesfrane Gospels).
So anyway, much to think in relation to these I think, as well as now ways to unite monastics and lays together (a new movement as radical as the original, new St Anthony’s, St Francis and so on).
On the Anglo-Irish monastics, here is a short podcast on St Cuthbert which is quite fun 🙂 given we just past his saint’s day:
listennotes.com/top-episodes/st-cuthbert/
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Hi Jonathan,
My suggestion is to take the approach that Billy Crystal takes to reading books in “When Harry Met Sally.”
“When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends.”
So buy the actual book book – don’t buy the Kindle version – skip to the end, and read McCarraher’s epilogue first before you die a tragic, miserable death.
John
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I’ve got the book already. When it arrived in the mail and I saw how large it was, I almost had a tragic miserable heart attack. But I shall do my best to get some sort of handle on it, as your remarks here and what others have mentioned elsewhere lately have certainly interested me in it.
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Arg or ugh. I’m sorry (not really) to have shocked your sensibility with making a reference to an article that, for the facts of the matter that matter, I contend makes a very compelling case and I agree with his general assessment. If you want to read that as a defense of Sullivan’s opus and character, well that’s on you. I aver that Sullivan in this case lays bare a false god, which should be added to the list John provided – Technology, Media, Liberty etc. This false god wears the fancy robes of virtue wokeness. Not that truth has ever mattered to idols, that is their raison d’etre, no? to keep us from the truth and blind us to follow whatever narrative those that are in the know have chosen for us to believe.
I say no to that – give me the facts, don’t pass your opinion off as fact, your narrative as the news.
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“I’m sorry (not really) to have shocked your sensibility”
That statement is a little facetious and hurtful Robert. I’m really not sure what’s gotten into you, granted this statement is not too bad but you have said some seriously unkind things to Michael. Hope you are well.
Anyway, I said that I “agree with the broad sentiment that so-called ‘wokeness’ can sometimes go a bit far and interpret evidence too loosely”, as argued by Sullivan. I then made a few extra criticisms of wokeness of my own! And I agreed that “it is bad journalism to assume that absolutely every crime where a non-white person is a victim must automatically be a racist attack.” So it is not as though I am coming at this from a place of massive bias or agenda pushing.
I then engaged with several of Sullivan’s points which I believe to be false. I did not ‘pass off my opinion as fact’ here, but rather listed the specific statements I disagreed with (including one which appeals to a racist trope) and gave separate arguments for each one as to why I felt they were incorrect. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, but I attempted to make a reasoned argument for all my claims. Fair enough if you don’t want to engage with those arguments for whatever reason, but it’s a bit rich to accuse others of passing off their own opinion as fact, while you yourself only assert an opinion and then neglect to engage with any specific criticisms of it.
Anyway, the arguments are there if you want to engage with them – I believe that together they partially undermine Sullivan’s case. After all, if this particular example is the best Sullivan could come up with, it does not suggest that the media is as rife with false narratives as he suggested.
To be clear, I agree that it is by no means proven that this particular attack had a racist motive. If you were to read the articles Sullivan references, you’d see many of them think this too – although it doesn’t suit Sullivan’s agenda to say this. Either way, Asians are clearly victims of racism, and it is not unreasonable for people to suggest that it is quite likely that such an attack likely had a racist motivation, and to go on to use this as spingboard to discuss wider racism against Asians. Whatever the facts of this individual case, that is clearly why it has got coverage. Similarly, look at all the black people in the USA being killed by police. I doubt that literally every single instance of a white policeman shooting a black man ever is racist. But clearly the existence of significant levels of racism in America, combined with the disproportionate number of white-on-black shootings, means that a very significant number of such instances are indeed racist – and so that, when yet another white policeman shoots a black person without good cause, it is reasonable to use this to begin a discussion about racism, accept the obvious truth that the shooting likely (though not 100% definitely) had something to do with racism, whether personal or structural.
On that point of personal vs. structural racism, I’d also add that Sullivan fails to engage with any of the detail of the articles he refers to and what their authors (and critical race theorists more generally) actually mean by ‘racist’. I apologise if you already know this, but ‘racist’ in this context doesn’t simply mean ‘someone who hates/dislikes Asians’ – it can, and usually does, also refer to more structural situations in which the perpetrator does not consciously hold obviously racist beliefs. For example, if someone is fine with seeing the poor being mistreated, as well as being inhuman, they also thereby act in an unconsciously racist way (however ‘tolerant’ of different races they might otherwise be) because mistreating the poor also means disproportionately mistreating black people, because they are disproportionately poor. That is just what structural racism is. Similarly, if someone doesn’t care about the plight of prostitutes – even if in the rest of their life they have no problem with non-whites or women – they would still behaving in a ‘racist’ way, inasmuch that, because prostitutes are obviously mostly women and also disproportionately from non-white backgrounds, their actions disproportionately hurt these groups. That is what most academics and critical race theorists are talking about in discussions of racist violence, so it is a pity that Sullivan does not make use of the distinction.
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David,
I was referring to the “news” articles as passing off opinion as fact, not your comments.
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Gentlemen: I think enough has been said about Andrew Sullivan and his article.
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Apologies as I’ve just seen this Father. Sure thing.
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Thanks Robert, sorry for misreading you on this particular point.
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I think Americans and people in general would be more attracted to Christianity if universalism were the main teaching. Eternal hell is ridiculous and emotionally tramautizing, and so I can’t blame anyone for choosing vague spirituality or Atheism if the other option is infernalist Christianity.
So blame the church (priests and theologians especially) for people leaving the church.
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While I broadly agree with you, it hardly matters in relation to this, Christians, non-Christians or whatever are all serving these gods, so for this Christian or not is irrelevent. All serve Mammon.
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Part of what drives capitalism is the whole “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps mentality,” that people get what they deserve in a deep sense. That strong kind of libertarian free will is also used to defend eternal hell. If people understood the chancy nature of free will, then it would cut down on “poor people deserve to be poor” and “people deserve to be tortured forever.” I’m really rooting for Seth Shabo and his upcoming two-stage luck objection to libertarian free will. (I believe in libertarian free will; I just acknowledge that free choices are random. I’m a Theistic universalist.)
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You’ll get no disagreement from me there (apart from libertarian free will, I’m fully the intellectualist conception), rewards distributed now reflecting later (very much time to late medieval developments, Puritan property and covenant city on the hill thinking, destruction of the commons and enclosure and subsequent developments). Just that it has long gone beyond and has warped and replaced the conception of the Christian (and other) sacramental universe with it’s own. Universalism as a belief own on it’s own change this whole way of life, without true conversion and alternate vision and life event with universalist patch it not challenge serving these idols and their damage (even among Christians). It’s how think, move and have our being in the West.
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A word from your sponsor: Please restrict your comments to the content of John’s article. We need to keep the discussion manageable and focused. And at all times maintain a tone of civility. Thank you.
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Neil Gaiman’s book is interesting precisely because, unlike McCarraher, it doesn’t peddle in a provincial account of “Capitalism”. But not Homer either.
Since we’re on this topic (of nearsightedness), can the rest of the world have just one respite from Americans lamenting about their former ridiculous orange president, otherwise having endured no hardships, leading nothing but a sheltered and pampered existence, neighbored as they are by two oceans and two weaker nations?
It’s extremely ironic that the same people who claim to stand against the multinational oligopolies (because if “Capitalism” is to be more than a strawman-ish fantasy, it should be that) are the first to traffic in the very same hysterical talking points professionally pushed on them (and through extension, on the rest of the planet) by the exact same entities.
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If words have meaning, then capitalism simply means the mode of production in which owners of capital earn surplus value from the labor-power (n.b. not the labor) of workers. That’s what the word means. Multinational ogilopolies dominate our present stage of capitalism, but are hardly definitional of it.
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*I edited that first sentence without making all the necessary adjustments. The owners earn surplus value from the labor of the workers precisely by paying for their labor-power rather than their labor as such.
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What a wonderfully unintelligible comment.
Since there’s nothing in the least provincial in McCarraher’s treatment of capitalism, I will assume that you did not read the book.
As for who suffered hardships and who did not, curiously enough it is possible to lament the orange imbecile not out of self-pity but precisely because of the suffering his administration visited on so many others. This is called having a conscience.
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I largely agree with the article. When I read this article, and when I read folks like DBH and Eugene Mccarraher, my truth sensor goes off. Having said that, I was largely raised with these American Gods, and they are difficult to exorcise. I’m afraid for many of us, the damage is already done. I’m not saying we cannot change, but there are many obstacles. Every time I bring up something I have learned from these gentlemen I am immediately shot down by both friends and family. Friends don’t understand, and family doesn’t even try. By temperament I have always been a live and let live kinda fella, for good or ill. I don’t exactly want to be ostracized, so what are folks supposed to do? Live the courage of our convictions and incur the wrath of friends and family? I bring this up because I think there are many of us in this position.
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I feel much the same way. It seems to me that people who wish to live more authentically, thinking and living against the grain of the dominant ideological power structures in one’s culture, tend more or less to be condemned to solitary or lonely lives, for lack of like-minded people if nothing else. It’s sort of like Tantalus’s predicament, hungering and thirsting for camaraderie while surrounded by people.
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Nearly all of us live “A Hidden Life.” I’m thinking here both of the Terence Malik movie and my second-favorite George Herbert poem, “Our Life Is Hid with Christ in God.”
MY words & thoughts do both expresse this notion,
That Life hath with the sun a double motion.
The first Is straight, and our diurnall friend,
The other Hid and doth obliquely bend.
One life is wrapt In flesh, and tends to earth:
The other winds towards Him, whose happie birth
Taught me to live here so, That still one eye
Should aim and shoot at that which Is on high:
Quitting with daily labour all My pleasure,
To gain at harvest an eternall Treasure.
Herbert’s poem hides St Paul’s words diagonally within his own quotidian existence. I hope I got the formatting correct. But Colossians 3:3 is most of us in a nutshell.
It is important to be self-conscious and live a life of courage and Christian decency. That sounds rather pedestrian, I know. But living a life of decency passes for heroism in these strange times.
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Thank you for this enlightening and challenging piece. I feel quite edified to have been given an opportunity to view our ‘American situation’ through a quite different angle than the worn out, and woefully inadequate, religious vs. secular paradigm. Much to consider, for sure. My copy of “American Gods” is on the way.
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Luke Timothy Johnson, my favorite New Testament scholar, said somewhere, “Although Luke consistently talks about possessions, he does not talk about possessions consistently.”
I think that’s fair. There is no once-size-fits-all statement by our Lord, except the categorical blanket statement, “You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Our Lord Jesus does say some surprising things about our relationship to Mammon.
For example:
“He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:10-13)
God has entrusted us with our own share of unrighteous Mammon. Some of us are given 10 menas, some 5 menas, and some of us only 1 measly mena. Even so, God wants us to be faithful stewards of what we have been given. The remaining commands that Jesus states about possessions I think we should treat like a Zen koan. We ruminate and ponder and meditate where and how they might apply to us. And then we need to be diligent to put them into action.
Jesus Christ once said, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” We don’t want to be that guy.
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