Finished reading: The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony 📚

A very readable book. Hazony’s arguments are clear, his writing lucid. One of his main contentions is that the best political order is “an order of independent national states.” He sees this order as the ideal mean between violent anarchy and hegemonic empire. While in a previous work Hazony looked at the Hebrew Bible as a source for philosophical reflection, in The Virtues of Nationalism he considers how the Old Testament ought to inform political theory. He argues that there is a “biblical preference” for the national state, though he doesn’t base his position solely on scriptural grounds. He’s especially critical of all “imperialist” political projects, of which he sees the European Union as the greatest contemporary example. The current “liberal imperialist” impulse, according to Hazony, owes much to Kant’s “enlightened” vision of humanity’s progress from anarchy to national independence to world empire. He contrasts the imperialist vision—given to abstraction, intolerant of those who demur at their utopian dreams for humanity—with that of the nationalist—a particularist, loyal to his nation but also humble and self-critical enough to be skeptical of over-extending his limited perception of the good. Much to chew on here, that’s for sure.

George Marsden, describing the conflicting impulses within modern fundamentalism (i.e., the religious New Right), which is partly a result of it being one of the heirs to that collection of diverse traditions known as American evangelicalism:

Fundamentalism…is fraught with paradoxes. It is torn between uncivil controversialism and the accepting attitudes necessary for being influential and evangelizing effectively. Often it is otherworldly and privatistic; yet it retains intense patriotism and interest in the moral-political welfare of the nation. It is individualistic, yet produces strong communities. It is in some ways anti-intellectual, but stresses right thinking and true education. It accentuates the revivalists' appeal to the subjective, yet often it is rationalistic-inductivist in its epistemology. It is Christianity derived from an ancient book, yet shaped also by the technological age. It is anti modernist, but in some respects strikingly modern. Perhaps most ironically, it offers simple answers phrased as clear polarities; yet it is such a complex combination of traditions and beliefs that it is filled with more ambiguity and paradox than most of its proponents or its opponents realize.

“Advent” by Sarah Klassen
(source: Rowan Williams' A Century of Poetry)

We are waiting (again) for the One
who has already come
and gone, leaving us
bereaved.

One waiting in the wings
for the cue - political, apocalyptic
or dramatic - to step into view,
descend,

be finally revealed
to the bewildered crowd -
complicit or without guile.
And to a remnant, impatient

for the curtain to rise on some
anticipated vindication. As if
flamboyant entry to a final act
will finally untangle everything:

a flawless denouement. As if
(if you’re not left behind)
a book will open up,
page after blinding page.

A prophet’s alleged to have said:
we cannot believe in one for whom -
for reasons philosophical,
emotional or rational -

we do not
(cannot,
will not any longer)
wait.

George Marsden, describing the “American pattern of secularization” at work in American politics (ca. 1896 to 1968):

Secularization in America took place not by a developing hostility between religion and the dominant culture, but by a blending of their goals. So Republican-Protestant hegemony no longer had to be explicitly Protestant. It just represented a certain concept of civilization. Civilization was equivalent in most minds to Christian civilization. It could be advanced by reforming progressive moral principles that people from all traditions might share. Many Democrats of the era, represented by [William Jennings] Bryan and [Woodrow ]Wilson, adopted this slightly secularized Protestant vision as much as did Republicans. The immense American missionary enthusiasm of this era, sweeping through it [sic] colleges, reflected this same impulse to help the world by advancing Christian civilization. Wilson’s secularized postmillennial vision of the American mission—to make the world safe for democracy—reflected a similar outlook. Religion, in short, had begun to work toward consensus.

Finished reading: Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis 📚

Kristyn took this one on her NYC trip

They just don’t make ‘em like they used to (in this case: covers to popular Christian books):

As wild as it initially appears, though, the cover becomes slightly more explicable when you read the first page of the book:

I think you can gather the gist of the book from surveying some of the graphics sprinkled throughout:

I appreciate the Petersonian note sounded in this one:

George Marsden, concluding a chapter on evangelicalism since 1930 (published in 1991):

One of the striking features of much of evangelicalism is its general disregard for the institutional church. Except at the congregational level, the organized church plays a relatively minor role in the movement. Even the local congregation, while extremely important for fellowship purposes, is often regarded as a convenience to the individual. Ultimately, individuals are sovereign and can join or leave churches as they please. Often they seem as likely to choose a church because it is “friendly” as to do so because of its particular teachings. Denominational loyalties, although still significant for substantial numbers of evangelicals, are incidental for many others, especially those with a transdenominational consciousness who have attempted to bring unity to the movement.

Given this situation, it is remarkable that American evangelicalism has the degree of coherence it does. Little seems to hold it together other than common traditions, a central one of which is the denial of the authority of traditions. Nonetheless, one can attend apparently unconnected evangelical churches at opposite ends of the country and, as likely as not, find nearly identical teachings on most subjects. Probably the principles of the mass market, which emphasize standardization and national campaigns, are primary forces that help maintain this considerable evangelical uniformity.

Whether such centripetal forces for coherence or some countervailing centrifugal forces will prevail is difficult to tell. Perhaps what has been happening over the past two decades is that the traditional transdenominational core has become subordinate to several parties (the charismatic, the conservative-nationalistic political, the progressive evangelical), and that these parties will soon be as distinct as were the mid-twentieth-century fundamentalist and modernist heirs to nineteenth-century evangelicalism. One cannot predict with assurance. Yet, given evangelicalism’s typically informal sense of the church, it is difficult to see how any single party could come to dominate and hold the larger movement together. Perhaps it will continue to develop in the form of sympathetic parallel manifestations of related traditions.

One other chief consequence of the lack of an institutional church base, and of the declining role of the traditional denominations, is that evangelicalism’s vaunted challenge to the secular culture becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. The movement depends on free enterprise and popular appeal. To some extent conservative churches grow because they promise certainty in times of uncertainty, in the name of the old-time gospel. Yet, with few institutional restraints on what message may legitimately be proclaimed, the laws of the market invite mixes of the gospel with various popular appeals. So the evangelical challenges to the secular “modern mind” are likely to be compromised by the innovative oversimplifications and concessions to the popular spirit of the age. Hence, as is so often the case in church history, the advance of the gospel is bound up with the advance of secularization within the church. Perhaps this conjunction is inevitable in a fallen world. The tares will grow with the wheat.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Loving one’s enemies leads disciples to the way of the cross and into communion with the crucified one. But the more the disciples are certain to have been forced onto this path, the greater the certainty that their love remains unconquered, that love overcomes the hatred of the enemy; for it is not their own love. It is solely the love of Jesus Christ, who went to the cross for his enemies and prayed on the cross for them. Faced with the way of the cross of Jesus Christ, however, the disciples themselves recognize that they were among the enemies of Jesus who have been conquered by his love. This love makes the disciples able to see, so that they can recognize an enemy as a sister or brother and behave toward that person as they would toward a sister or brother. Why? Because they live only from the love of him who behaved toward them as toward brothers and sisters, who accepted them when they were his enemies and brought them into communion with him as his neighbors. That is how love makes disciples able to see, so that they can see the enemies included in God’s love, that they can see the enemies under the cross of Jesus Christ. God did not ask me about good and evil, because before God even my good was godless. God’s love seeks the enemy who needs it, whom God considers to be worthy of it. In the enemy, God magnifies divine love. Disciples know that. They have participated in that love through Jesus.