Letters to Fundamentalists No. 1

[These comments were extracted from a review I wrote concerning John M. Frame’s“A History of Western Philosophy and Theology.” My review argued that Frame mishandled philosophical terminology, misunderstood or misrepresented the positions of the philosophers and theologians he chose to comment on, and beyond simple inaccuracies, had deliberately constructed a set of typologies, which while using the language of philosophers, perverted that language in the service of his own apologetical purposes and denied his readers any real understanding of the history he purported to chart.] 

I may not be a philosophical realist, but I do realise that between what I have written, and the position of a modern “Conservative” Christian, we are likely at a point of incommensurable difference. The shame of this situation is that it is very clear that Frame and I do not value the same concepts of what constitutes scholarship. Since before Plato, the philosophical tradition has accepted that a fundamental aspect of its work is an openness to the other through a process of disciplined enquiry.

Contra Omnes Apologia

As a child, I grew up in a church deeply divided over the nature of revelation. Attending Missouri Lutheran Church services in the 1960s was sometimes a pure leap of faith as to the love of God, for that love was surely not evident in church meetings. In our tiny country parish, I saw two loving and well respected clergy pushed out of their pulpits because their theology was not sufficiently conservative for a few vocal members of the congregation. I remember hearing a phrase that began like this: “Only a heretic could ever say…”

In Praise of Idleness -- an essay by Bertrand Russell

I don't often include works by other on this blog, but when I stumbled over this essay I was taken by its immediacy and importance, even though it was published 83 years ago. -- DHH
1932
Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: ‘Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.’ Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.

Flight from Newark

This digital painting is ~54 MP and was printed on 16” x16" Moab Entrada 3200 gsm archival paper.

A number of people have asked the source of the painting on the home page of my blog. I must confess. It is of my own making.

I flew from Newark International on the day it reopened following 9/11. In the days after the towers falling I had become accustomed to nervous teenagers with M16 rifles standing guard at Penn Station. They were Army infantry by their uniforms, completely unprepared for the rushing crowds and the masses of pan-handling homeless. These kids with guns could have looked no more shell-shocked had they been dropped naked into Al Qaeda headquarters.

By the time Newark Airport reopened things had changed. The children were still uniformed and armed with automatic weapons, but they were no longer shell-shocked. Instead they had been turned into bullies. At EWR they walked with the swaggering nonchalance of the “authorised,"demanding to see identification and tickets from anyone who looked “out of place.” As Newark is as much or perhaps more a centre of diversity as anywhere in the U.S. of A., these soldiers found many opportunities to exercise their authority, a task they generally took to with loud, mocking voices.

In spite of the “progress” made by women and people of colour in the American military, most recruits do not come from urban areas like Newark. More than any time since the Civil War, our military is dominated by white Southerners. From Texas to Virginia, the American South provides over 44% of recruits in spite of having only 36% of the country’s recruiting age population. In contrast, the Northeast provides only 14% of new enlistments, while having 18% of the recruitment pool. Indeed, in the North, only Maine, the poorest and most poorly educated of the northern states can rival the Old South in terms of recruitment.

I suspect had they known that I had spent time defending a Sikh business just outside of Asbury Park from the misdirected anger of my fellow citizens, these children with guns would have detained me, or perhaps just marched me out the door for a beating in the parking garage.

It took me three hours to clear security that day. I returned a week later via San Francisco International. The scene could not have been more different. There were no armed guards. After checking a bag, I began to walk toward the short security line. An alarm went off, and the PA system began to direct people to exit the building. Everyone, including staff and security simply ignored the announcement. I went outside, but found myself oddly alone, save for the normal rush of passengers into the building. After 15 minutes, I returned and passed through security. I asked two security agents what had happened. The first looked at me quizically, not understanding. The second said, “I’m not sure. I guess it was a false alarm."

I began the painting, one of a small series sharing the title Flight from Newark, not long after, with this trip in mind.

In May of 2009 Harpers published a story titled ““The Crusade for a Christian Military: Jesus Killed Mohammed” in which author Jeff Sharlet described how the subtitle for his piece derived from words written in large red Arabic letters on the side of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle used by American troops in Iraq. Aside from the wisdom of providing such a fine RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) target to hostile forces, Sharlet’s article provides more evidence in a growing concern that America and in particular its military has "left behind” (pun wickedly intended) its once bedrock anti-establishment beliefs.

It is perhaps no accident that this concern regarding the American military reflects the disproportionate religiosity and fundamentalist demographics of the Old South, where 18th Century Anglican dominance has been suplanted by wave after wave of revivalism. The South is still among the poorest, most poorly educated and unhappy regions in the United States: That fervent religion and reactionary politics should dominate this landscape should come as no surprise. This is the land where Mencken once chastised the police for silencing atheists attending to the infamous Scopes Trial:

Dayton, Tenn., July 15. [1925] -- The cops have come up from Chattanooga to help save Dayton from the devil. Darrow, Malone and Hays, of course, are immune to constabulary process, despite their obscene attack upon prayer. But all other atheists and anarchists now have public notice they must shut up forthwith and stay shut so long as they pollute this bright, shining, buckle of the Bible belt with their presence. Only one avowed infidel has ventured to make a public address. The Chattanooga police nabbed him instantly, and he is now under surveillance in a hotel. Let him but drop one of his impious tracts from his window and he will be transferred to the town hoose-gow. 

The Constitution of Tennessee, as everyone knows, puts free speech among the most sacred rights of the citizen. More, I am informed by eminent Chattanooga counsel, that there is no State law denying it -- that is, for persons not pedagogues. But the cops of Chattanooga, like their brethren elsewhere, do not let constitutions stand in the way of their exercise of their lawful duty. The captain in charge of the squad now on watch told me frankly yesterday that he was not going to let any infidels discharge their damnable nonsense upon the town. I asked him what charge he would lay against them if they flouted him. He said he would jail them for disturbing the peace. 

"But suppose," I asked him, "a prisoner is actually not disturbing the peace. Suppose he is simply saying his say in a quiet and orderly manner." 

"I'll arrest him anyhow," said the cop. 

"Even if no one complains of him?" 

"I'll complain myself." 

"Under what law precisely?" 

"We don't need no law for them kind of people." 

The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 15, 1925

I hope the American political and military systems can rid themselves of this enormous danger before it is too late. There are at least a few signs of hope. It is no longer 1925, and Southern youth are abandoning religion, and in particular fundamentalism, at an even higher rate than the rest of the nation.

Niagara of memory viii. Canada Never

.

.

i.
when I was a child
Nike missiles pointed at the sky
when ever we were afraid

When Khrushchev
hammered his shoe
the missiles lifted

When Cuba
began to build
Russian missiles
our missiles lifted

When a submarine
came too close
our missiles lifted

When an airplane
strayed afar
our missiles lifted

When the Russian Navy
put to sea
our missiles lifted

When the Soviet
Army marched
our missiles lifted.

When in Washington
our men
were frightened
our missiles lifted

Did the missiles
save us?
As a child
I did not know

In my naïve
way I did know
that we did
duck and cover
when
our missiles lifted

ii.
Nearby the  missiles were great balls of ice cream, each one perhaps 10 or 20 yards across. We were told that these great domes protected the sky. Now of course I understand that these great white balls sheltered sweeping radar antennae.

We were told that the Nike missiles would rush into the sky to take down any Russians before they could reach us with their atom bombs  (That's what we called them then -- atomic bombs).  What they did not tell us was that these missiles would shoot up from Niagara Falls where we lived over to Canada where they would explode with their own  nuclear fury, bringing down not one, but a wave of Russian bombers.

I wonder what the Canadians thought of this idea-  that American atomic bombs would detonate over their lands and people.  Perhaps they did not know that the America's nuclear shield rested on their heads.

iii.
I think  clean
Canada
a lake
only
the faintest
tobacco
stain

swimming
in plain
sight
of  the bottom
and sky

hard rock
Islands
between the grass
and poor scrub
pine

sky
blue to black
and the thousand thousand
stars
fireflies
no difference

iv.
In 1961 when the Power Project was completed, Niagara Falls  became the largest hydropower producer in the Western world. Waters diverted from the Niagara River fed great generators that supplied electricity to homes and industry as far as New York City, 250 miles to the south. Survivability was the buzzword of American defense plans in the 1950s and 60s. War hawks like Gen. Curtis LeMay believed that a small nuclear conflict could be survived, leading to an American victory. More than 310 Nike missile sites dotted the United States, protecting vital resources and populations. Each site held three or four underground bunkers feeding missile after missile to launching rails above.  It is not known how many of these sites were nuclear capable. Given the otherwise miserable ineffectiveness of the Nike system, it seems likely that most of the missiles were nuclear tipped.
Canada's largest city, Toronto,  is due north of Niagara Falls, at just the optimum range for a Nike missile

v.
bright
I think scoured
Canada
a lake
steaming
black
and gray

rock
and ash
here and there
white with heat
Ash

Toronto
still
no cries
just ash
Ash
still

.

.

Eschatons and Extinction

.
.
How can we not think of extinction, and by that I mean not the inexorable movement of time across the field of ideas that we so prize, but rather physical extinctions, the actual end of humanity, as our children or our children’s children are murdered by the rising tide of our own wastes, our own hatreds?

Ask the question of yourselves, Christian peoples and scholars:  Where does extinction fit within your finely wrought theology?  Is my grandchild’s death some years hence, whether it be by drowning in some future storm, or of poisoning in some mad fit of hatred, a realisation of the eschaton?

How much beauty will be left unrevealed when our time is gone? How many dances left without steps,  how many scansions left rhyme-less, how many songs unsung and lines undrawn? Is this your eschaton, your end-time and fruition?

Valéry

If I share anything with Valéry, it is an unfailing return to the divine, even as we despise God. There is something desirous about complete self reference, even as we can refer only to the outside, only to that which is beyond our self.

Any words that we adopt to explicate the interior fall out of us like dusty bricks.  We may place them one upon another, thinking that we are creating a temple of the self, but this is only delusion. What we create is a temple to the self, and this is a different matter. As much as we want to speak of the interior, it is impossible. If we are truly self-referential, we fall into a silence that is madness, or perhaps death.