“A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham’s law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 52).
Discipline in the Local Church
INTRODUCTION: Church discipline is not very common in the contemporary church, and, because it is rarely done, when it is done, it is rarely done well. As with everything, we have to turn to the Scriptures for guidance and protection. And in turning to the Scriptures, we are not just looking for procedures, but we …
Liturgy and Life
Mark your calendars now.
Strange New Respect
The pope appears to have decided to score some easy points with those who are currently whooping the climate change thing. I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I can’t stand it. Hitching our collective guilt wagon to the bogus science of climate change? But on the other hand, this does do my Protestant …
Garlanding the Bull
Chapter 7 of Gelernter’s book is on “The Emergence of Modern Americanism,” basically covering the period of the Second World War and the Cold War that followed. As in all his chapters, he is full of interesting and useful information, but he applies it in wildly skewed ways. If Americanism is a religion (and he …
No Unique Logres
I want to begin this next section of my review of Gelernter’s Americanism with a healthy reminder from C.S. Lewis. This comes from That Hideous Strength. “So that, meanwhile, is England,” said Mother Dimble. “Just this swaying to and fro between Logres and Britain?” “Yes,” said her husband. “Don’t you feel it? The very quality …
Monsters or Sinners?
Chapter Five is where David Gelernter and I part company most drastically, for reasons easily anticipated. In this chapter, Gelernter tackles the subject of Abraham Lincoln, “America’s last and greatest founding father.” As usual, Gelernter is uncannily accurate in his description, and flies wide of the mark in his evaluation. Lincoln was the great founder …
It Shouldn’t Be Either
“Jesus tells us that the hireling does not care for the sheep the way a good shepherd does. In saying this, the Lord was teaching in effect that the ministry cannot be allowed to become a profession. Despite this severe warning, the modern Church has steadily drifted into a compromise with what we might call …
A Busy-Pants Foreign Policy
In his fourth chapter, Gelernter addresses the rise and development of the American religion in the course of our war for independence. “The American Creed [liberty, equality, democracy] combined with American Zionism [residue of postmillennialism] yielded a full-blown American belief system. These beliefs would be refined further; they would eventually supersede Puritanism and become the …
Seamus is My Kind of Music Critic
This is Seamus James Wilson, being held by his lovely grandmother. His nicknames thus far are Seamus Jamus, or the more popular ShayJ.