MyQuest | my thoughts on life's journey

A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In April during the centennial observances, I read an article in the New Yorker about the various treatments of the Titanic story. It commented that all the movies and miniseries added drama to the story. The author felt this was unnecessary, because the story itself had sufficient drama. His example for this was Walter Lord's A Night to Remember.

Published in 1955, Lord's telling is based on his thorough research, including interviews with still-living survivors. Here are the real stories of that night as told by the people themselves. And you don't need fictionalized romances, fictionalized daring escapes, or fictionalized jewels. All that is in the real story.

You also get the story of the other boats -- the Carpathia, which came quickly and heroically to the rescue, and the Californian, which sat ten miles off all night watching the Titanic fire rockets and wondering what was going on.

Lord also understands the larger cultural issues of the Titanic story -- how it changed culture and why it still captivates us. This was a breaking point for the world of established wealth and privilege. Never again would people accept class differences quite the same. And the admired rich shifted from the established wealthy to entertainers and sports figures.

Also, people were never more so sure of themselves. The Titanic came at the end of a 100 years of ever improving technology and understanding, with no major European wars. After this tragedy came war and the rest of the 20th century:

"The unending sequence of disillusionment that has followed can't be blamed on the Titanic, but she was the first jar. Before the Titanic, all was quiet. Afterward all was tumult. That is why, to anybody who lived at the time, the Titanic more than any other single event marks the end of the old days, and the beginning of a new, uneasy era."

But that sort of commentary is kept to a minimum. The book is primarily story and brief character sketches. And it is engaging. I started it last night after work and couldn't go to sleep until I'd finished it.

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OKC bombing questions

Michael Isikoff writes about a new book that tells the most thorough account yet of the OKC bombing and what the federal investigation never answered.

Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim

A fascinating article about new discoveries of the Samartian temple on Mt. Gerizim.  The Samaritans continue to exist as a minority in Israel.  The article discusses how the Hebrew bible erased details of the Samaritan history.

A pioneer reflection on Wounded Knee

Nebraska settler Jules Sandoz, as recorded in the book Old Jules by his daughter Mari, rode up to the Wounded Knee massacre site when he heard the news that day.  This was his response,

There was something loose in the world that hated joy and happiness as it hated brightness and color, reducing everything to drab agony and gray.

When General Grant expelled the Jews

I had never heard of this story before.  How interesting to know that we engaged in our own sort of pogrom.  Also very exciting to see the change of heart in Grant and how different and pro-Jewish he was as president.  This article is well worth the read (and it isn't long).

Religious liberty doesn't make me "throw up"

Rick Santorum said many embarassing and frightening things over the weekend, including his outrageous comments on higher education.  But what led the news this morning was his comments on John Kennedy's famous 1960 address to Baptists in Houston, that reading that speech made him want to throw up.  Wow!  

So, this morning I went downstairs and got my collection of Kennedy speeches and re-read that famous speech.  I am shocked that anyone would find it objectionable.  That Santorum does is incredibly revealing.  And people should pay attention.

Evangelicals were worried about a Catholic president, that he would be overly influenced by the Catholic hierarchy, and Kennedy met with them to assure them of his commitment to religious liberty and the separation of church and state.  Here is Kennedy's core statement:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference -- and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

In addition to that, "I believe in an America . . . where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."

It is very disappointing that in 2012 a Catholic candidate would deny that claim.  It is also troubling that evangelicals would now accept someone denying that claim, where fifty years ago they expected a candidate to make that claim.  

Kennedy also made a bold statement about the conflict between private consciences and the national interest, "But if the time should ever come . . .when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same."

Re-reading Kennedy's speech, I became interested to re-read George Washington Truett's famous 1920 sermon on the steps of the nation's Capitol "Baptists and Religious Liberty."  In some ways it sets the context for the concerns that Kennedy was addressing when he spoke to the Baptists in Houston.

Re-reading the Truett for the first time probably since the 1990's, I was surprised by how dated it is and how sectarian it is.  I had not remembered that.  But it was as clear about individual liberty and the separation of church and state as I remembered it.  

It would be good for this sermon to re-enter the national dialogue, especially as it addresses the concerns a century ago about Catholic hierarchy and its conflict with religious liberty.  As Truett portrays the 1920's Baptist vision, religious liberty is for the individual not the church or institution.  In fact the individual's conscience is free even from the church.  

As I've been saying the last month or so in relation to the contraception issue, the religious liberty to be safeguarded is that of the person, the employees of Catholic hospitals who should not have Catholic doctrine imposed upon them.  

Here is what Truett preached (I've highlighted the key part of the paragraph):

Baptists have one consistent record concerning liberty throughout all their long and eventful history.  They have never been a party to oppression of conscience.  They have forever been the unwavering champions of liberty, both religious and civil.  Their contention now, is, and has been, and, please God, must ever be, that it is the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to worship God or not, according to the dictates of his conscience, and, as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices. Our contention is not for mere toleration, but for absolute liberty.  There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty.  Toleration implies that somebody falsely claims the right to tolerate.  Toleration is a concession, while liberty is a right. Toleration is a matter of expediency, while liberty is a matter of principle. . . It is the consistent and insistent contention of our Baptist people, always and everywhere, that religion must be forever voluntary and uncoerced, and that it is not the perogative of any power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, to compel men to conform to any religious creed or form of worship, or to pay taxes for the support of a religious organization to which they do not believe.  God wants free worshipers and no other kind.

Truett held views which we would now label as anti-Catholic.  Post-Vatican II mainline Protestants and even evangelicals made siginificant strides in over-coming their anti-Catholicism, but largely because the Roman church had made significant strides in overcoming their opposition to Protestants.  We spent fifty years drawing closer together, only to now be drawing farther apart as the Roman Catholic Church goes backward on the changes of Vatican II and mainline Protestants continue to move forward on social justice issues in contemporary life that the Catholic church hasn't even begun to address adequately.

Here was Truett's concern.  It was not about the individual Catholic believer; he argued vigorously for their freedom of religion.  His concern was the hierarchy and its way of structuring ecclesiastical power in opposition to individual liberty.

Likewise, the Catholic conception of the church , thrusting all its complex and cumbrous machinery between the soul and God, prescribing beliefs, claiming to exercise the power of the keys, and to control the channels of grace; all such lording it over the consciences of men is to the Baptist mind a ghastly tyranny in the realm of the soul and tends to frustrate the grace of God, to destroy freedom of conscience, and to hinder terribly the coming of the Kingdom of God.

***

The right to private judgment is the crown jewel of humanity, and for any person or institution to dare to come between the soul and God is a blasphemous impertinence and a defamation of the crown rights of the Son of God.

Out of these two fundamental principles, the supreme authority of the Scriptures and the right of private judgment, have come all the historic protests in Europe or England and America against unscriptural creeds, polity and rites, and against the unwarranted and impertinent assumption of religious authority over men's consciences, whether by church or by state. Baptists regard as an enormity any attempt to force the conscience, or to constrain men, by outward penalties, to this or that form of religious belief. Persecution may make men hypocrites, but it will not make them Christians.

We would do well to remember that this famous, influential sermon of Truett's details the context and the concerns that Kennedy was addressing in his famous 1960 speech.  

We would also do well to remember the important distinction that Truett makes -- that religious liberty resides with the individual, sometimes in opposition to their church when that church tries to override individual conscience.

We are in a frightening place in the United States when a leading candidate for President casts scorn upon our magnificient tradition of religious liberty.

The Greatness of Ike

Ross Douthat has a good column today on President Eishenhower.

But ultimately Eisenhower is underrated because his White House leadership didn’t fit the template of “greatness” that too many Americans pine for from their presidents. He was not a man for grand projects, bold crusades or world-historical gambles. There was no “Ike revolution” in American politics, no Eisen-mania among activists and intellectuals, no Eisenhower realignment.

Instead, his greatness was manifested in the crises he defused and the mistakes he did not make. He did not create unaffordable entitlement programs, embrace implausible economic theories, or hand on unsustainable deficits to his successors. He ended a stalemated conflict in Korea, kept America out of war in Southeast Asia, and avoided the kind of nuclear brinkmanship that his feckless successor stumbled into. He did not allow a series of Middle Eastern crises to draw American into an Iraq-style intervention. He did not risk his presidency with third-rate burglaries or sexual adventurism. He was decisive when necessary, but his successes — prosperity, peace, steady progress on civil rights — were just as often the fruit of strategic caution and masterly inaction.

Perhaps “other men” could have achieved this combination of steadiness, competence and successful crisis management, as the Eisenhower memorial’s impersonal design seems to suggest. But few of them have occupied the Oval Office these last 50 years. 

 

The Last Plantagenets

The Last Plantagenets by Thomas B. Costain
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is the third of Costain's histories of the Plantagenet which I have read. And the first third was as enjoyable as the previous two volumes.

Costain is a great storyteller who makes his characters vivid. Noble kings, beautiful queens, wicked villains, courageous knights, inept councilors, jealous uncles, weak kings, crafty archbishops, seductive mistresses, proud peasant revolutionaries, etc., etc. And these are caught up in stirring battles, intricate diplomacy, and so many twists and turns of the plot as they betray each other that it is sometimes difficult to keep duke this and earl that and lady this quite straight. All the great personages of British history stride across this stage and one is captivated. I can't wait to read Costain's books to my children.

This volume is in three parts, unequal in size, with the first being the largest by far. It is typical of the previous books I've read, in that it tells in engaging detail (but not boring detail) the story of Richard II beginning with his legendary parents Edward the Black Prince and Joan the Fair Maid of Kent on through Richard's murder at the hands of his cousin. Richard, whose visual representation has become the iconic image of an English king, and who has some wonderful stories of courage and nobility, ultimately was arrogant and inept.

I was curious how in less than half the remaining pages Costain was going to cover six more reigns, and that is why the book receives such low marks from me.

The second section is a hurried skip through the reigns of Lancastrian kings and the Wars of the Roses. He assumes that people are well acquainted with this history (even says something like, "the Wars of the Roses will be familiar to readers of Plantagenet history, so I'll just hit on a few personalities and episodes" -- I had hoped this would be my reading in Plantagenet history!). The characters and stories are fun, but I felt cheated out of a more careful narrative.

The final section is his treatment of Richard III and a discussion of who murdered the royal princes -- a story which has engaged me since childhood, as I assume it has many others. Costain calls it the greatest mystery in human history.

Costain is a defender of Richard III and believes the Henry VII murdered the boys. Once as a child, I had read one previous author who argued such (I read a lot of British royal history as a kid) and was not convinced, but this time I am more persuaded.

But what is odd in the final section is that he foregoes his normal telling of stories with great characters and basically writes a treatise arguing for Richard and against Henry and sites all these historical sources and disputes the accuracy and political machinations of the texts. It is something more akin to academic history (though not quite) and not the kind of engaging story-telling history that I expect and want from Costain. Though I found this section interesting, it was not fun.

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Beyond King, which religious leader(s) has had a major impact on American politics or culture?

The Texas Faith blog asks that question and gets a host of answers from Billy Graham to Abraham Heschel to John Brown to John Lennon.  

That is an interesting question to consider.  Many mentioned in the link would be on a list I would form.  Here's my initial stab at a list of the most influential, not sure who I'd place at number 2 after King:

Roger Williams
Jonathan Edwards
John Winthrop
Cotton Mather
CI Scofield
Ralph Waldo Emerson
William Ellery Channing
John Leland
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Billy Sunday
Isaac Mayer Wise
Walter Rauschenbusch
D. L. Moody
Billy Graham
Oral Roberts
Abraham Heschel
John Howard Yoder
Dorothy Day
Reinhold Niebuhr 
Charles Hodge
Mary Daly
Troy Perry
Thomas Merton
Daniel & Philip Berrigan 

Okay, who's been left off?

Having gone through that list, I think I would have a tie for #2 after Dr. King and those two folk would be Roger Williams and Reinhold Niebuhr.

Torture and Modernity

Cullen Murphy has an interesting essay in The Altantic about torture.  Contemporary interrogation and torture techniques derive from those used by the Inquistion.  He argues that rather than torture being a throwback to the middle ages, it was actually a new, modern method and was more a harbinger of things to come than a holdover from a previous time.  He writes that it is based on a philosophical shift -- that humanity could determine what happened and could find proof.  In the middle ages, he writes, it was assumed that human attempts at knowledge were limited and that in many or most instances we could not discover what happened or find proof, so we had to rely on God.  Though he doesn't say this himself, it raises the question -- did modernity begin with the Inquisition in the 12th century rather than the Italian renaissance in the 14th?