Hugh Hewitt and St. Paul
Hugh Hewitt is unhappy about a memogate whitewash. He thinks that the blogosphere should be more insistent on an admission of bias on CBS, and he chides other bloggers for worrying that too shrill a response could "hurt the reputation" of the blogosphere. Hugh hopes that this silliness will pass; me, too. I also hope that Hugh's silliness will pass.

The authority of the blogosphere is the authority of a prophet. There are no investors, no barriers to entry, no enforcement beyond millions of computer mice. A prophet can be a powerful influence in society, but she or he does so by being "a voice in the wilderness." (That being said, there is no reason that Republican shills or Democrat shills or Socialist cranks can't start their own blogs, too. Whether they are taken seriously is something else.)

I am reminded of St. Paul facing the sanhedrin in Acts 22:30 and following. Paul was in no mind to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, his Lord and master; Jesus had been on trial before the same body and been found guilty--by His own intention--largely by keeping quiet. Paul wanted to defend himself. Things were not going well for him until he had the brilliant idea in 23:6 of playing on their divisions. Paul spoke the truth, and like any other politically charged body, the sanhedrin shipwrecked on it. Their divisions brought the end of the trial.

My question in all this to Hugh is, are you Paul or are you the pharisees? Both believed in a physical resurrection. Both wanted that truth accepted. Paul, on the other hand, was content that the truth was proclaimed. He was not determined that the saduccees admit it.

Hugh writes that what bothers him most is precisely that CBS has refused to admit the truth of its political bias. That is asking too much. Bernard Goldberg, who would no doubt affirm the bias at CBS, might well say that Dan Rather sincerely believes he is unbiased even in this case. Does it matter if they admit it? CBS ratings are down. Blog commentators regularly refer to them as "See-BS." Pressing for more than this runs the risk of turning some one into a knee-jerk partisan who gives the impression that satisfaction is impossible.

Just say it: in an ideal world, we could have asked for more, but this is pretty good. If it were me with a big blog to write, I'd turn my attention to another topic. The real danger isn't of becoming a hack anyway, but of becoming self-referential. The blogs broke this story, and any emphasis they give to it will always have the dim overtones of someone tooting his own horn. The blogs rose out of a primordial soup of narcissism, and they will always be in danger of falling back in again.


- posted by galloworth @ 7:01 AM 3 comments

 
Americanism as a Mirror
Thanks to Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost for giving me the impetus to stop putting it off and start posting entries to a blog.

David Gelernter has written an interesting essay on Americanism that Joe Carter has started a symposium about. (To read Gelernter's essay, follow Carter's link; it's a special freebie deal he worked out with Commentary.) Carter thinks that this essay is provocative; that is true in the sense that it provokes responses. It's the responses that are the interesting part.

There really isn't much point in dissecting Gelernter's work here anyway. His generalizations are, well, too general to attack or defend; it's kind of like the old saying, "If you don't want an argument, sing what you have to say." It's hard to argue with a song, and it's hard to argue against an essay that summarizes 300 years of history in less than two pages. Still, there is a certain poetic quality to it:

Americanism is notable, of course, not merely for its spectacular ability to arouse hate. Over the roughly four centuries of American and proto-American existence, it has also inspired remarkable feats of devotion. You would need some sort of fierce determination to set forth in a puny, broadbeamed, high-pooped, painfully slow, nearly undefended 17th-century ship to cross the uncharted ocean to an unknown, unmapped new world. You would need remarkable determination to push westward into the heartland away from settlement and safety. You would need ferocious bravado to provoke the dominant great power of the day on the basis of rather flimsy excuses, and ultimately to declare war and proclaim your independence. The Union side in the Civil War would have needed practically incandescent determination to keep fighting after the South had won decisive battles, slaughtered vast numbers of Union soldiers, and gained the sympathy of the two leading West European powers.

In the 20th century, you would have needed enormous determination to turn your
back on the isolationism and anti-militarism that comes naturally to Americans and butt into World War I, and then, after World War II, to reject isolationism once again when you accepted the Soviet empire's challenge. Freedom and independence for Greece and Turkey--not exactly pressing American interests--occasioned America's entry into the cold war. And what on earth would make an Idaho or Nebraska farmer--that man about whom Tony Blair spoke so feelingly in his eloquent 2003 address to Congress--believe that it was his responsibility to protect the Iraqi people and the world from Saddam Hussein? What did all that have to do with him?

It is not easy to motivate a parent to send children to battle half way around the world. It is not easy to motivate people to make endless sacrifices for others, especially when a teaspoon of cynicism would reveal some greedy corporation getting nearly all the immediate benefit. It may be a natural part of the human being to yearn for causes and meaning transcending the self, but when large numbers of people cheerfully buy into the enterprise, something is happening. What is intriguing about Gelernter is that he holds out the possibility of a uniquely American something, which he calls "Americanism" and treats like a religion.

Gelernter offers is a three-tier structure to this religion. I keep thinking of it like bowling pins or the pyramid on a dollar. Here are Gelernter's three tiers:

The fundamental fact: the Bible is God's word. Two premises: first, every member of the American community has his own individual dignity, insofar as he deals individually with God; second, the community has a divine mission to all mankind. Three conclusions: every human being everywhere is entitled to freedom, equality, and democracy.

Now let me paraphrase them:

1. The fundamentalists are right: The Bible is the Word of God;
2. The (a) Fatherhood of God toward America and (b) the Brotherhood of Man;
3. Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

There is something for everybody here! In one short paragraph we have included American Biblicism, premillenial liberalism, and Superman. Not that, if you were to get Cotton Mather, Adolf von Harnack, and Superman in a room that they would all get along. In fact, as far as criticism is concerned, that is just the point. Gelernter fails to prove to us that this phenomenon, for which so many Americans have lived and died, is actually a coherent unity, or just a series of fortunate paradigms that clothed themselves in similar rhetoric during our nation's history.

That being said, the Americanism essay still accomplishes something. Its lofty language engenders introspective responses; and since this is the blogosphere, most of the fun and better than half the worthwhile information is in the flurry of responses. Joe Carter already has quite a few. I read through some of them, and I liked most of them. As bloggers blogged, I learned more about the commentator than the object of comment.

The indefatigable mumon, Joe Carter's own leftist quasi-troll, responds to the essay with a predictable blast of the-Christians-are-greedy-hypocrites line, with a vague admission that there might actually be something good about America, since someone in China pointed it out to him. If Gelernter's metaphor is right, then we can think of mumon as an evangelism prospect for Americanism--and the prospects for conversion seem dim. That is the challenge of any religion: to pass on the faith and to convert, or face oblivion. I can't see mumon becoming a true believer. For that matter, any leftist-leaning person will likely respond to Gelernter with a Bronx cheer.

Sonspot says an "Amen" to Gelernter, and then goes on to say that the Bible predicted America all along--that we are somehow a fulfillment of the string of prophecy beginning with Genesis 3:15 and going on from there. How Sonspot makes the jump from John 3:16 to us is not quite clear, although Sonspot claims

But, the promise of forgiveness and the truth of equality are like fire and heat, you cannot have one without the other.

This might be news to St. Paul, who writes that our peace with God gives us hope (Romans 5) and that no one hopes for what he already has (Romans 8). Paul's advice to slaves and slave-owners, both Christian, is also a curiosity in light of this inseparable link between democratic equality and the forgiveness of sins. It would appear, though, that Sonspot considers Jesus an American.

Scofflaw's Subsidy provides us with yet more evidence that Gelernter has convinced someone that he believes...what he believes. The essay, while thoughtful and largely true, is also fairly predictable, considering what is written on the blog's left sidebar. There, the author states his belief in De Tocqueville's three sources of American exceptionalism (entrepreneurship, religion, and patriotism), and surprise, this is what he brings up in commenting on the essay. Then, there is this striking bit of cheek: "I believe hatred towards America is representative of man's natural rebellion from God." I'd bet that'd go over real well with some African Anglican seething over the Episcopal church's consecrating a practicing gay bishop.

Mark Byron offers us a post that really is, almost schizofrenically, in two parts: first, that America is "sort-of" a "city on a hill," a particularly Christian nation in an evangelizing sense; and second, that Jews like Gelernter can buy into it since they believe in a monotheist deity. Gelernter is more introspective than that in his own essay, but Byron seems to want to talk mainly about how Christians, too, can quote the Old Testament.

The Evangelical Underground treats us to a brief sermon on how far the U.S. has fallen from its blessed beginnings. He writes, "I really don't believe America has ever been in a state in which it could be compared to Israel." What does this mean? We've never been that good, or we've never been that bad? God wasn't ever too happy with Israel, from what I can tell.

The Billy Goat Blog makes an appropriate response to the claim of Americanism as a "religion." The discussion turns to theology, and unless you are pretty well versed in the different forms of millennialism, you'd better plan on chewing on it for a while. The tendency of present-day evangelicals to easily get disgusted with politics and withdraw is in plain view here. Really, the Billy Goat is not any more affected by "Americanism" per se than mumon is. This is even more true of Back of the Envelope, who seems a little miffed that anyone could have any take on Israel other than his own pre-millennial dispensationalism.

The blog a-sdf provides us with an essay that tries at once to be a "believer" in Americanism and also inclusive to unbelievers. We read here that what makes America great is how the tenets of Americanism provide correctives for the disparate forces that hold us together: things like market freedom vs. unbridled consumerism. Interesting, but ultimately pointless. I wonder just how could Gelernter agree with this concluding thought: "All of this to say to those who do not share my faith: you are as vibrant a part of Americanism as I. It is what we agree on- not what we disagree on- that unites us under the American banner." In other words, "Americanism" is whatever you think it is--a pretty useless construct. Not surprising that the writer appears to be a musician in the classical tradition, living on the west coast, but with conservative beliefs. I'm sure he's a really neat guy, but I'm thinking that in his deep-blue surroundings, emptying the theological content out of "Americanism" might be a matter of self-preservation.

Loren the Mythopoet reminds us that Americanism is different from Christianity. Not surprisingly, as he lists "humanity" ahead of "religion" in his interests. He is, of course, correct-- unless God chose to raise up the U.S. to amalgamate all the disparate traditions of Christianity that came here into one real McCoy. Unlikely. He is the closest person so far to a "true believer" in Gelernter's religion.

The blogcorner preacher is enthusiastic for Gelernter, but he thinks that Gelernter, if he only knew it, was (along with the Puritans) a fellow Baptist: "As a Baptist, I can attest that the essence of religious Puritanism was the rejection, as being Biblically unsound, of the forms and hierarchy of the established church (Church of England for the Puritans, but also Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches). " He is, in fact, more concerned with the failings of "nominal Christians" than anything else in his essay. America would be so much better off with an American creed rather than that darned Apostles' Creed!

RazorsKiss does something like a fisking to Galerntner's essay. His is one of only two I read to address systematically the arguments made--and so, perhaps, misses the point. He goes so far to make a counter thesis, which goes as follows: "The overtly Christian beliefs of a large number of America's citizens and leaders, over a long period of time, have manifested themselves countless times. In both the public, and private lives of both groups, this influence has been clearly seen, and identified." Big deal. Gelernter isn't really trying to create a religion or promote one; he is just trying to explain a phenomenon. RazorsKiss gets caught in the semantic trap of actually considering Americanism an organized religion, which no one could possibly claim. His counter thesis merely observes the phenomenon without attempting to explain it or project it as a force or predictor of future events.

The political teen shows himself to be just that. In a way, this is the most enlightening blog of all, because here is someone who is too young to be influenced by the "city on a hill" rhetoric that Mark Byron heard in the classroom growing up (me too), but educated enough to make some wry observations. I wish I could have written like that in my teenage years! Think of where I would be now....

Gideon Strauss is a thoughtful fellow, and he shares quite a few thoughts. He tells us why he loves America (neither having been born here nor living here now), and states the obvious, too: that some, if not nearly all, of the anti-Americanism is nothing more than what it seems to be, namely contempt for our shallow yet internationally popular culture and envy of our military power. As such, Strauss is completely rejecting Gelernter's essay, but along the way he tells us quite a lot about himself.

On An Azure Field treats us to incontrovertible proof that the Puritans would not recognize Americanism as a continuation of their religion. In fact, they would be rolling in their graves if they only knew.... Duh. I don't think that Gelernter would disagree, for that matter. The subtext of this essay seems to be a lament that Calvin's Geneva is gone forever, and postmodern America is nothing like it, nor was modern America before that. Well written essay, though, and a likeable guy. Again it's interesting--you learn a lot even from his disagreements.

Brutally Honest sort of says the same thing I am claiming--not that Americanism is all that compelling in every respect, but: "If the brain is indeed a muscle needing a work out, Gerlenter's [sic] article provides the means by which to get blood flowing through those cranial veins." I can remember when "musclehead" was an insult, but I still agree. Arguing against (or for) the "Americanism" essay might be like boxing a pile of whipped cream, but if I watch you boxing, I learn your moves.

I could keep going, but the point is made. Lots of great writing and thoughtful comments--all in all a very fruitful couple of hours. There probably wasn't a single essay without something I agreed on. Gelernter has indeed managed to write a provocative essay. And, as I reflect on all the comments as a whole, I think that he might actually have something here, though most certainly less than he claims. American patriotism, entrepeneurship, and religion (as I learned from Scofflaw) are all energetic--perhaps more so than other nations. At the core of that extra energy is something in the American air: a hard-to-define but palpable sense of moral and eternal purpose. It's something that moves folks to begin great causes and sign up for crusades. Defining it is difficult, and maybe in some vague Heisenberg sort of way, observing it destroys it. Many of the bloggers I read would, I think, agree with that sense of things; and more than one of them privately frets that it might be leeching away as a casualty of the culture wars.

The whole mass of essays reminds me of an excellent book I read a while back called The Human Christ by Charlotte Allen. Her thesis is that all those folks who go searching for the "historical Jesus" find...themselves. As it was quipped about Harnack, "he went looking for Jesus and found a reflection of a liberal protestant, looking up from a deep well." Each of the writers who responded to the essay in any meaningful way found themselves in Americanism. I don't suppose that's a bad thing, but it may be of dubious usefulness as a unifier. A good mirror is a valuable thing, but it is no substitute for divine revelation.


- posted by galloworth @ 10:59 AM 4 comments