As you may have gathered, I am having a hard time getting over the attempt on the part of the Intoleristas to ban our children from participation in the Lord’s Supper. I laughed when I first heard it, and it has been one of my happy thoughts ever since.
I don’t know what is going to happen next. When we come to worship that Lord’s Day morning, will there be protesters in bonnets? Will any of them have a Carrie Nation hatchet to scare our worshiping minors away from this dangerous flirtation of theirs with demon rum? Will we have to run a gauntlet of women shouting, “lips that touch liquor will never touch mine” — along with intermixed shouts of “votes for women!”?
Not that we use rum in the Lord’s Supper, but you get my drift. Ambrose Bierce once defined rum as an alcoholic drink that produces madness in total abstainers, and one begins to follow his point.
I have been arguing for years that the historical Puritans have been grievously misunderstood and slandered. They didn’t wear all black, they didn’t use those silver buckles, they didn’t go around with a dour look on their faces. The Puritans, to use C.S. Lewis’ description of them, were characterized by gladness more than anything else. They were robust, highly-sexed, vigorous, lovers of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. They wore bright-colored clothing and loved their theology. The outstanding Puritan theologian was named John Owen, and I have his commentary on the book of Hebrews. which runs to seven volumes. The first two volumes are the introduction. Now some might think this confirms the caricature of the Puritans, but if you saw a picture of Old John, you would think it was D’Artanian from The Three Musketeers, right down to the plume in his hat and the lawntops on his thigh-high boots. As Lewis put it, again, “bishops, not beer, were their special aversion.”
At the same time, as in, concurrently, we have also been arguing that modern Enlightenment secularism in all its forms (including the version of it that has corroded the mainstream denominations) is grim, dour, fussy, boring, and has pursed lips and heavily powdered cheeks.
So for years, we have been seeking to recover this 16th century antithesis, to live as Puritan yahoos and party commandoes, and not as a bunch of “little old church ladies of both sexes.” We have wanted (how we have wanted) to set the exuberant yellow of Trinitarian living alongside the gray ugliness of modernity, and the puce green of postmodernity. One aspect of this on-going endeavor of ours was the Trinity Festival — by the way, icon to your immediate left! sign up today!
So we were in the middle of planning all this, see? A Shakespeare play, concerts, history talks on the American War for Independence, a ball, a banquet, all built on the foundation of a glorious worship service, God is good, you know? And then, like a unasked gift from the heavens, like rain in the desert, our adversaries started to complain about Christ’s gift of wine to the children of the covenant. Not that I have to say anything as crude as see? . . . but see? It is not every neo-Puritan that has the tremendous privilege of having a boney, secular censorious finger waved under his nose, and I count myself a fortunate man. It is not every neo-Puritan who has to be told by the prim people to stop giving sacramental wine to three-year-olds. Any day now, I am expecting another anonymous missive, suitably concerned, slightly furrowed brow, pious tone, accusing me of having these people who file all these complaints against us on a secret Christ Church payroll. But you can’t buy this kind of thing, man — it’s all grace.