Caritas in Veritate

Benedict's much awaited encyclical, CARITAS IN VERITATE, has now appeared. Those expecting a light pastoral read will not find it here. This is Benedict the public intellectual and social critic at work. Here are some of the key themes:

INTRODUCTION:

• Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine.
• Justice is inseparable from charity
• The common good requires justice and charity.
  

CHAPTER ONE

• Without "the perspective of eternal life, human progress... runs the risk of being reduced to the mere accumulation of wealth..."
• There is a strong connection between the Church's teaching on human life and the Church's teaching on social ethics.
• Much of the encylical was a memorial to Paul VI 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, perhaps the most progressive of all modern papal encyclicals.
• The progress or development of society must be connected to an understanding of Christian vocation or what Christians are called to do in this world.
• Globalization undermines Christian brotherhood (and sisterhood?). True human communion is only possible through God's grace.

CHAPTER TWO

• Profit cannot be the exclusive goal of an economy. The common good must be the ultimate end of any economy.
• The downsizing of social security programs will lead to "grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State."
• Governments should not limit the freedom of labor unions to negotiate. Unions and other worker's associations should be respected and honored.
• "Uncertainty over working conditions caused by mobility and deregulation," undermines the family.
• Economic institutions must be created to deal with shortages of food and clean water around the world.
• Governments must invest in rural infrastructures and agrarian reform since food and water are "universal rights of all human beings."
• Infant mortality rates must be lowered by alleviating poverty.
• When a state promotes atheism "it deprives its citizens of the moral and spiritual strength that is indispensable for attaining integral human development."

CHAPTER THREE

• Modern man "is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin."
• The Church's wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society
• The present economy is an example of the influence of original sin.
• Human beings "confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity...In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise. "
• The Church has "unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice for the market economy."
• "Grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution."
• The civil order needs intervention from the State for purposes of redistribution.

CHAPTER FOUR

• Individual human rights presuppose duty to society.
• Affluent societies have a duty to address problems such as food shortages, water contamination, education, and health care.
• Companies need to be created that are "oriented towards social welfare, and the diversified world of the so-called 'civil economy' and the 'economy of communion'."
• "The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. "
• Nature is not "something more" than the human person. To think otherwise is paganism.
• Natural resources are "squandered" by wars.

CHAPTER FIVE

• Isolation is a form of poverty. "The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side." Humans establish their worth "in relation to God and others.".
• Citizens should get to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State.
• Migrants are human persons who "possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance."
• Reform of the United Nations so that is can help to accomplish much of what was said in this encyclical.

CHAPTER SIX: TECHNOLOGY

• Technology must be used in an ethically responsible way.

The commentary has been trickling in. (After all, it does take time to read this document--all 30,000 words). I expect to see more pieces related to the encyclical later today. The folks at Commonweal and First Things have set up pages with links to analysis. As expected, those on the left love Caritas Vertitate and those on the Right have a few problems with it.

The conservative Catholic and John Paul II biographer George Weigel's response to the encyclical in National Review On-Line is the most interesting. Weigel argues that the progressive aspects of Caritas in Veritate were influenced by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the group of Catholics in the Vatican who Weigel claims are bitter about John Paul II's refusal to celebrate the anniversary of Paul VI's Populorum Progressio. According to Weigel, Benedict needed to pay homage to the views of the Council in order to keep the peace in the Vatican. The result was a "hybrid" document. Weigel thinks that the sections of the encyclical that he attributes to the Council are unclear, poorly written, and out of character for Benedict. It should not be surprising that the parts of the encyclical that deal with life issues and the relationship between faith and reason reflect the true, untainted thought of Benedict. It is those sections--interestingly enough the sections that conform to the free-market capitalism of Weigel's brand of conservative Catholicism--that Catholics should take to heart. Weigel puts it this way:

Benedict XVI, a truly gentle soul, may have thought it necessary to include in his encyclical these multiple off-notes, in order to maintain the peace within his curial household. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear will concentrate their attention, in reading Caritas in Veritate, on those parts of the encyclical that are clearly Benedictine, including the Pope’s trademark defense of the necessary conjunction of faith and reason and his extension of John Paul II’s signature theme — that all social issues, including political and economic questions, are ultimately questions of the nature of the human person.

As Mark Silk puts it over at Spiritual Politics: "In short, ignore all that stuff Weigel disagrees with. Let's hear it for the Conservative Catholic Cafeteria!"

ADDENDUM: Check out this parody of Weigel's piece. Also, Tim Lacy has called my attention to this response to Weigel's piece by Michael Sean Winters.

It also looks like Barack Obama and Benedict will have a lot to talk about, and agree upon, when they meet this week. If Obama is a socialist (which he is not), then so is Benedict (which he is not).

Religion in Jamestown

I have been doing some reading today on religion in colonial Jamestown, the first successful British colony in America. When it comes to the influence of Christianity on colonial settlement, Jamestown is usually interpreted as the anti-New England. If New England was founded on the bedrock of Puritan theology and culture, Jamestown was a place where religion did not play a prominent role in colonization. Thousands of AP US history students and college freshmen have written essays contrasting Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay, an assignment that only feeds the common notion that religion was unimportant in early Virginia.

Yet, as I read some of the early laws from the Jamestown settlement I was struck not by the differences in religious development between Massachusetts Bay and Jamestown, but by their similarities. Both colonies were founded, at least on paper, to spread the Christian gospel to the native Americans. Both colonies had established churches--Anglican in Virginia; Puritan Congregational in Massachusetts. Both colonies understood their colonial experiments in terms of covenant theology. (Although the notion of "covenant" was certainly stronger in New England). If they were obedient to God's commands, God would bless them. If they were not obedient, God would withhold his blessing. Both colonies tended to interpret natural disasters or Indian invasions as signs of God's punishment.

Religion and the state were closely wed in both colonies. Both colonies mandated church attendance and punished sins such as adultery, fornication, and slander. Both colonial governments treated dissenters harshly. We are well aware of New England's track record on this front. Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Baptists, and Quakers were all banished from the colony for their dissenting viewpoints. But the government of Jamestown could be just as harsh. Roman Catholic priests, for example, were not permitted to stay in the colony for more than five days. When Puritans from New England arrived in Virginia in the 1640s the House of Burgesses passed laws forbidding Puritan ministers from settling in the colony and forcing Puritan laypersons to conduct worship with the Book of Common Prayer. When Quakers arrived at the same time, a law was passed requiring them to be arrested without bail and held in prison until they agreed to leave the colony. When we think about religious dissenters in Virginia the eighteenth-century Baptists usually come to mind, but the persecution of dissenters in the colony started much earlier.

Though religion did not permeate the culture of colonial Virginia in the way that it did in New England, neither was Virginia an entirely secular place in the seventeenth century.

NOTE: Let me recommend two excellent sources on the culture and values of colonial Virginia. The first is Edward L. Bond's Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia (Mercer, 2000). Bond's book has not received the attention it deserves. This is an excellent and well-crafted study of religion in Jamestown and beyond. The first chapter makes a compelling case that religious life in early Virginia was characterized more by government enforced behavior than personal belief. The other source is T.H. Breen's essay "Looking Our for Number One: Conflicting Cultural Values in Early Seventeenth-Century Virginia." It is the best thing I have ever read on the individualistic culture of early Jamestown Though it was published in the South Atlantic Quarterly in 1979, I still assign it to my students.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things on-line that caught my attention this past week:

The Bebbington quadrilateral is under attack.

Sean Wilentz reviews some new books on Lincoln.

Peter Steinfels on John Calvin.

Financial advice from Abigail Adams.

H.W. Brands reviews Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History

R.R. Reno: Nice little piece on localism and cosmopolitanism and the buzz it has created.

A year with the Harvard Classics--all five feet of them.

Is Wendell Berry going to jail?

The American Revolution Center is moving to Philadelphia.

The cool historians.

The July issue of Common-Place is up.

Religion in American History blog has a new look.

Wilfred McClay on grit.

Barack Obama: Cosmopolitan.

A reflection on the life of Wallace Stegner.

Top 400 universities on the planet.

Marie Arana reviews John Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington.

Wither early American women's history? Historiann reports from the Omohundro conference.

More historians are studying religion than any other category. At least this is what the AHA reports. Randall Stephens offers some commentary.

Fourth of July Op-Eds

Here are some reflections on July 4th, courtesy of this weekend's national newspapers and other outlets.

The New York Times offers three op-eds related to this patriotic season. Kathleen DuVal examines the way the American Revolution impacted Indians and slaves. Adam Freedman shows how the American Revolution cast British traditions in a new mold. John McCurdy on our bachelor founders.

The New Republic is running several old essays on the Founding Fathers, from Charles Beard to Gordon Wood.

William Bennett and John Cribb sing the praises of the Declaration of Independence.

Silvio Lacetti laments the loss of historical places to development.

Washington Post editorial: The rebellious opportunistic spirit of Americans.

Vic Henningson on what kind of government the Founders really wanted.

The Wall Street Journal celebrates David McCullough. (With a great shot of him working in his writing shed!).

Susan Jacoby reviews Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism.

Peter de Bolla on some "small falsehoods" about the Fourth of July.

An encrypted message to Thomas Jefferson is cracked.

Garrison Keillor: Unalienable rights include a decent potato salad.

Finding a Sense of Place in Arlington, Virginia

Patrick Deneen has posted this hilarious video over at Front Porch Republic.

More on the Pope's Yet to Be Released Encyclical

Debate continues to rage between conservative and progressive Catholics over the meaning of a papal encyclical, "Charity in Truth," that is yet to be released. (Perhaps early next week, according to most reports). Hat tip to my colleague Jim LaGrand for passing along this piece from Fr. Robert Sirico which appeared today on the National Review Online. Fr. Sirico, who is the president and co-founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty, issues a very reasonable message of "let's wait and see" to progressives eager to use the encyclical to gain political points in the battle to define the Catholic church in America:

Will the document draw attention to the weaknesses of Western-style capitalist systems? One hopes so. We might expect the pope to call on market forces to be regulated by moral concerns, within a strong juridical framework, and an exogenous apparatus of standards to curb excesses. But here is the operative question: In what sense would such a call be a blow against the idea of free economic institutions? The short answer is that it will not be.

I think Sirico is probably correct here. At least this is what one Italian newspaper is reporting. But who knows? I guess bloggers like me who continue to write about this encyclical need to take Sirico's advice and be patient.

He continues:

On the one hand (doctrine, liturgy, and sexual morality), progressives tend to take dissenting positions from defined and binding Church teaching. On the other hand (economic and social policy), they want to boast of the Church’s "best kept secret," especially to the extent that they think it coheres with any number of secular-left platforms, while ignoring those aspects of Catholic social teaching that clearly don’t fit the leftist nostrums.

It is quite a spectacle to see Catholic progressives — who in other circumstances contort themselves into exegetical pretzels when they want to undermine clear, emphatic, authoritative, and repeated magisterial prohibitions on same-sex relations, female “priests,” and contraceptive acts — morph into virtual Ultramontanists on prudential matters such as the precise level of a minimum wage.

I wonder if when it comes to ignoring those aspects of Catholic social teaching that don’t fit its agenda the Catholic right is just as guilty as the left. There does seem to be a side to Catholic social teaching, especially as it relates to workers, that we might legitimately call "progressive." I subscribe to First Things, but I do not see much of this side of Catholic social thought being defended on its pages. (I am more than willing to be corrected on this).

I should also give kudos here to one of my readers, Tim Lacy, for his prophetic insight. In response to my last post on this subject, Lacy wrote:

I can tell already that I'm going to be amused by the gymnastics of pro-market theory, hard-right U.S. Catholics who try to dismiss this as the pope merely speculating, as is his right as the leader of the Church (i.e. an encyclical is not ex cathedra, so not binding teaching). They will say that Catholics are free to agree-disagree here. It's their modus operandi.

Compare Lacy's comment to Sirico's words:

Let us be clear: The Church explicitly makes no such claims of infallibility on those policy matters that it considers a matter for prudential judgment (i.e., most policy issues) but allows for Catholics to hold a variety of viewpoints on such questions such as the exact size of the state’s share of the economy. Clearly no Catholic can be an anarchist or a communist — but there is a lot of room for prudential disagreement within these parameters. Benedict XVI has followed the model of John Paul II in saying that the Church has no infallible model of political economy to impose on the world.

Good job, Tim. You called it.

Finally, Sirico warns about getting too loose with the way we use the term capitalism:

I am not sure who such conservative defenders of "unbridled capitalism based on greed" are supposed to be. I think it is a fair prediction to say that any pope would come out against any system "based on greed."

But again I wonder if the entire system of capitalism is not inherently based on greed. Isn't it redundant to use the term "greedy capitalism?" I appeal again to my last post where I questioned Michael Novak's assertion that the great American capitalists of the nineteenth and twenty centuries were driven less by greed than the "sheer romance of conquering the deserts and the Rockies." I remind you of the words of "Chris," one of the commentators on Novak's original blog post: "The radically self interested individual, rationally seeking his own material comfort; scarcity; unlimited desire for consumption. None of these are things that Catholics can believe in if we take seriously the church's teachings, and yet every economic model is premised on their being true as a matter of fact." (I think Chris would be pleased to learn that I just picked up a copy of William T. Cavanaugh's Being Consumed. I hope to read it, and perhaps blog on it, soon).

I remain a capitalist for many of the same reasons that Michael Novak remains a capitalist. It seems to be the only economic system that celebrates the creativity and dignity of the human person. But I also agree with John Paul II when he wrote in the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concern) that "The Church's social doctrine adopts a critical attitude towards both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism.” (BTW, I just found a 1988 piece from the New York Times where William Safire blasts this encyclical). The kind of corporate, consumer-driven capitalism that we currently have today in the United States tends to undermine many things that Christians (and many non-Christians) hold dear, not the least of which are family and community. I hope that this is something we can all agree upon.

If you have managed to read this far, please let me know where I have gone wrong.

The Michael Jackson Tributes Keep Rolling In

Here is one from the Christian band Mercy Me. I must admit that this was the first time I understood the words to this song.

Zotero?

I have now come close several times to using Zotero to organize my research, but I never have the time to really commit to it. After reading McLemee's article in today's Inside Higher Education I may take another stab at it.

Does anyone use Zotero? I would love to get some testimonials.

There and Here

I am continuing to work through Michael Pollan's A Place of My Own. Today I read Pollan's musings on the pouring of the concrete footings for his little writing hut.

...any building represents a meeting place of the local landscape and the wider world, of what is given "Here" and what's been brought in from "There." The Here in this case is of course the site, but the site defined broadly enough to take in not only the sunlight and character of the ground, the climate, and flora and slope, but also the local culture as it is reflected in the landscape--in the arrangements of field and forest and in the materials and styles commonly used to build "around here."....

And There, of course, is just another way of saying the broader culture and economy, which in our time has become international....In fact, a whole set of values can be grouped under the heading of "There," and these can be juxtaposed with a parallel set of values that fit under the rubric "Here."

THERE---HERE
Universal ---Particular
Internationalism---Regionalism
Progress---Tradition
Classical---Vernacular
Idea---Fact
Information---Experience
Space---Place
Mobility---Stability
Palladio--- Jefferson
Jefferson---Wright
Abstract---Concrete
Concrete---Rock

The juxtapositions can be piled up endlessly, and though matters soon get complicated..., they can still serve as a useful shorthand for two distinct ways of looking at, or organizing the world.

The tension between the two terms is nothing new, of course....In our own time, the balance between the two terms has been steadily tilting toward the There end of the scale. There are some powerful abstractions on the side of There, and in the last century or so these have tended to run over the local landscape. The force and logic of these abstractions are what have helped farmland to give way to tract housing, city neighborhoods to ambitious schemes of "urban renewal," and regional architecture to an "international style" that for a while elevated the principle of There--of universal culture--to a utopian program and moral precept. Modernism has always regarded Here as an anachronism, an impediment to progress. This might explain why so many of its houses walked the earth on white stilts, looking as though they wanted to get off, to escape the messy particularities of place for the streamlined abstraction of space...

...these days everybody has a good word for regionalism and the sense of place. But it remains to be seen whether the balance between Here and There is actually being redressed, or whether universal culture, more powerful than ever, is merely donning a few quaint local costumes now that they're fashionable and benign. I've never visited a "neo-traditional" town like Seaside, the planned community on the Florida panhandle celebrated for its humane postmodern architecture and sense of neighborhood, but I can't help wondering if the experience of sitting out on one of those great-looking front porches and chatting with the neighbors strolling by doesn't feel just a bit synthetic. In an age of Disney and cyberspace, it may not be possible to keep a crude pair of terms like Here and There straight too much longer, not when a "sense of place" becomes a commodity that can be bought and sold on the international market, and people blithely use homey metaphors of place to describe something as abstract and disembodied as the Internet.

3/50 Plan to Save Local Businesses is Picking Up Steam

A while back I posted on the 3/50 Project, an attempt to save local "brick and mortar" businesses. What started as a grass roots movements is starting to pick up steam. This morning's Wall Street Journal is running an article about the project.

Michael Novak on the Pope's Forthcoming Encyclical

It was only a matter of time before someone at First Things responded to Thomas Reece's prediction about Benedict XVI's forthcoming encyclical, "Charity in Truth." For this debate, FT brought out the heavy artillery in the form of Michael Novak, author of The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (among many other books) and one of the most prominent Christian defenders of free-market capitalism. Here is Novak in a piece on the First Things website entitled "Economic Heresies of the Left."

What exactly is in Benedict XVI’s new encyclical on the economy and labor issues is not yet known. Catholic leftists and progressives, though, are already trembling with excitement. Three glaring errors have already appeared in these heavily panting anticipations.
An accurate presentation of real existing capitalism requires at least three modest affirmations:

1) Markets work well only within a system of law, and only according to well-marked-out rules of the game; unregulated markets are a figment of imagination.

2) In actual capitalist practice, the love of creativity, invention, and groundbreaking enterprise are far more powerful than motives of greed.

3) The fundamental systemic motive infusing the spirit of capitalism is the imperative to liberate the world’s poor from the premodern ubiquity of grinding poverty. This motive lay at the heart of Adam Smith’s important victory over Thomas Malthus concerning the coming affluence—rather than starvation—of the poor.

I think I agree with #1. I could also agree with #3 if Novak would be willing to concede some of the negative consequences of capitalism in poor countries.

#2 is a hard sell for me. Novak elaborates a bit on what he means by the notion that "in actual capitalist practice," creativity and invention is a more powerful motive than greed. He writes:

And in the United States, scores of entrepreneurs are ready to risk losing everything they have in order to create something new, create something that will make life better for their fellow men. Henry Ford failed repeatedly in several businesses before he finally made the Ford Motor Company the great model for business that it once was. (It was the first establishment in history to pay its laborers a handsome wage of five dollars per day. At the time, ordinary lawyers averaged about $1500 per year. Ford’s motives, of course, were not altruistic; he wanted his workers to purchase the cars they helped build.)

As Oscar Handlin once noted, almost every industrialist who built a new railroad North and South in the United States in the nineteenth century prospered. Nearly every tycoon who tried to build an East–West railroad lost money. What spurred men to keep trying had less to do with greed that with the sheer romance of conquering the deserts and the Rockies. The element of romance in business is simply not grasped by dialectical materialists.

I guess I tend to lean a bit more on what Novak calls the "dialectical materialist" side. My understanding of human nature makes it difficult to believe that the PRIMARY reason why Ford did what he did was to better humankind. I find it even harder to believe that the early railroad tycoons did what they did for the "sheer romance of conquering the deserts and the Rockies." (This argument completely ignores the race dimension of this romantic conquest. Was God pleased with this kind of "conquering?") Any student of history would have a hard time accepting such interpretations of American progress.

I like what "Chris," one of the commentators on the blog, has to say about the piece. (He borrows from Stephen Marglin and William Cavanaugh):

1) The issue with greed is not whether it exists or not, but whether the structure itself encourages or even glorifies what ought to be understood as a sin on par with lust and wrath. There is good evidence (and I have yet to see a satisfying critique of it) that capitalism's rise was a direct result of a move by protestant theologians to repackage greed as self-interest, in the hopes that excess in what they saw as the least deadly of the seven sins would curb excess in the others.

2) What about the fundamental premises of Capitalism: The radically self interested individual, rationally seeking his own material comfort; scarcity; unlimited desire for consumption. None of these are things that Catholics can believe in if we take seriously the church's teachings, and yet every economic model is premised on their being true as a matter of fact. I know there are attempts by economists to fit those things into traditional economic models; Marglin explains very well why every attempt to do so ends up at best problematic.

3) Finally, is our only duty to the poor to make them materially wealthier? If so, at what cost? Having traveled abroad to third world countries, generally, what the introduction of capitalism means is access to fast food chains and the destruction of the things that made them unique in terms of place, culture, the things that made them a people. Capitalism tends to homogenize peoples, to take away their distinctiveness. How do we measure this cost against the efficiencies inherent in easy access to McDonalds and Walmart?

I do not have the time or space here to develop all of Novak's argument, but the piece includes the usual shots at big government and Catholic progressives. Read it for yourself and decide.

Have the Obamas Chosen a Church?

The big story (or non-story) in religious news this morning is Amy Sullivan's article on the Time website announcing that the Obama's have chosen to worship at Evergreen Chapel at Camp David. Sullivan writes:

...the 150-seat Evergreen Chapel attracts a congregation of between 50 and 70 people most Sundays. The rustic stone-and-glass octagonal structure was built nearly two decades ago through private funds; President George H.W. Bush dedicated it in 1991. At the ceremony, Christian singer Sandi Patti sang and the late Cardinal James Hickey of Washington delivered a sermon calling the chapel a "witness to our common belief that we need to seek divine guidance in the conduct of our national affairs."

Each week, regardless of whether the President is on-site, Evergreen Chapel holds nondenominational Christian services open to the nearly 400 military personnel and staff at Camp David, as well as their families. A music director from nearby Hood College coordinates adult and children's choirs (Clinton sang occasionally with the choir when he visited). In December, the kids in the congregation put on a Christmas pageant and the chapel holds a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. The Bush family enjoyed Christmas at Evergreen Chapel so much that they celebrated the holiday there for all eight years of Bush's Administration.

Camp David's current chaplain, Lieut. Carey Cash, leads the services at Evergreen. If the White House had custom-ordered a pastor to be the polar opposite of Jeremiah Wright, they could not have come as close as Cash. (As it is, the White House had no hand in selecting Cash. The Navy rotates chaplains through Camp David every three years; Cash began his tour this past January.) The 38-year-old Memphis native is a graduate of the Citadel and the great-nephew of Johnny Cash. He served a tour as chaplain with a Marine battalion in Iraq and baptized nearly 60 Marines during that time. Cash earned his theology degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth - and, yes, that means Obama's new pastor is a Southern Baptist.

What do we know about Evergreen Chapel? Not much. The fact that Christian singer Sandi Patty performed there, coupled with the fact that the Bush family worshipped there, might lead one to believe that this is an evangelical congregation. Sullivan describes it as a "non-denominational" church, but this may be misleading. In evangelical circles, "non-denominational" is actually code for a Bible-centered congregation that is not affiliated with any particular denomination (such as Assembly of God or Evangelical Free or Conservative Baptist), but is solidly evangelical in its teachings and doctrine. A classic example is Bill Hybels's massive Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, IL (which, by the way, is now the flagship congregation in its own association of churches). But as Mark Silk reports, Evergreen is actually as "non-sectarian" chapel. It was founded by mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

But this is all probably moot. The White House denies that Obama has decided on Evergreen or any other church for that matter. The search continues.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things on the web that caught my eye this past week:

Fareed Zakaria: Greed is good. Pope Benedict's forthcoming encyclical: Greed is bad.

Was the Great Siege of Gilbratar the most costly battle in the American Revolutionary War?

Religion in American History turns two.

Steven Miller on Billy Graham and the new Nixon tapes.

What do writers do all day?

Sarah Posner brings an end to her column, "The FundamentaList."

David Nasaw reviews Jackson Lears's Rebirth of a Nation.

Christopher Hitchens reviews Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life.

Interview with Johan Neem, author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts.

The Bible of baseball card collecting.

Just say no.

A homeschoolers' football league.

Economically, the Pope is to the Left of Obama

Over at the Newsweek's "On Faith" website Thomas J. Reese S.J. lets us know what we can expect from Pope Benedict's forthcoming encyclical, "Charity in Truth."

Although we have to wait for the actual text of the encyclical, there are a number of points that are already evident from what Benedict has said and written on the economy:

• Continuity of Benedict's thought with the teaching of earlier popes will be evident. Rather than rejecting the progressive social teachings of his predecessors, Benedict will show himself to be the left of most Americans including President Obama.

• The Theology underpinning Catholic social teaching will be an important part of the encyclical. Economic policy is not measured by dollars and cents but by whether it enhances the dignity of the human person and reflects God's commandment of love. Love is the measure of justice.

• Being a voice for the Third World is seen by Benedict as an essential part of his ministry. As he has already said, "We cannot remain passive before certain processes of globalization which not infrequently increase the gap between rich and poor worldwide. We must denounce those who squander the earth's riches, provoking inequalities that cry out to heaven."

• Skepticism toward capitalism and the market will permeate the encyclical. Absolute faith in the market is seen by Benedict as a form of idolatry. The need for government regulation of the economy is a given.

• The Common Good and impact on the poor are the yardsticks by which the economy should be measured.

The pope will also have very negative things to say about war. As he has said before, "Violence, of whatever sort, cannot be a way of resolving conflicts. It mortgages the future severely and does not respect either persons or peoples." Like John Paul, he opposed both wars in Iraq. He also wants to see swords turned into plowshares. "[L]ess than half of the immense sums spent worldwide on armaments would be more than sufficient to liberate the immense masses of the poor from destitution. This challenges humanity's conscience." He will also have very positive things to say about the United Nations and multilateralism even if it means limits on national sovereignty.

Woods and Nostalgia and Progress

I was quite taken today when I read Historiann's post "Into the Woods." She waxes nostalgic about how many of her childhood memories "seem to revolve around the woods."

I grew up in a land of mixed fields and forests that were slowly being converted into the outer edge of a city suburb, and in the 1970s and 1980s, there were still large patches of forest surrounding my neighborhood. Riding bikes with friends to the edge of the woods, and then ditching the bikes for a walk into the unknown was how I spent my summers from ages 8 to 12...

Back then, in the days before cable TV, video games, and the internet, back even before everyone had central A/C, the woods in summer meant freedom from parents and endless entertainment for anyone under the age of 16 (that is, before the precious driver’s license was proffered.) Because I came from a family that didn’t hike or camp, the woods for me was a space totally unmediated by adult influence or supervision. We could play Little House in the Big Woods, or the Swiss Family Robinson, or Tom Sawyer there. We packed baloney sandwiches and thermoses of Kool-Aid so that we could stay out all day long. We peed in the woods, and on occasion pooped there too, because no one else was around. We followed cricks that became creeks that were lined with wild strawberries in June...

Like many of Historiann's faithful commentators, I could not help but recall my own childhood growing up in the woods. I spent almost all of my pre-adult years living on Turkey Mountain in Morris County, New Jersey (one of the more charming parts of the mountain is pictured above). We spent our summer days hiking the "blue trail," catching crayfish in mountain creeks, sneaking peeks of the New York City skyline (including the World Trade Center towers) from the top of the mountain, hanging out in a clearing that was sometimes used by the local Lions Club for clambakes, and roasting hot dogs seated on cinder blocks at a small campfire where local teens and hunters would regularly frequent.

Most of this property is now part of a housing development of McMansions. When I visit my Mom and Dad I look through what's left of the woods and see the kids of wealthy parents playing in the sterile and safe streets of this new suburban "paradise." I think about myself standing in the exact same spot thirty-five years ago. The trees and the trails and the fields are gone forever. My memory grows dimmer every day.

I wonder why we get nostalgic about things like woods and other childhood play places. As I thought about this I remembered a short passage I read in William Leach's Land of Desire: Merchants, and the Rise of a New American Culture. Leach describes a campaign speech that Herbert Hoover delivered in 1928 before an audience in his home tome of West Branch, Iowa. I will let Leach tell the story:

In his childhood there was no poverty in West Branch and little suffering from the downswings in the Chicago market. Now, in 1928, the market could affect the town's whole economy...Hoover was quick to remind his audience of the progress the United States had made and of the many "benefits" of economic change. "I do not suggest return to the great security which agriculture enjoyed in its earlier days," he insisted," because with that security were lower standards of living, greater toil, less opportunity for leisure and recreation, less of the comforts of home, less of the joy of living." Yet, with this said, he came back again to his bittersweet theme, emphasizing "sentimental regret" over what had disappeared. He acknowledged that one could not really go back home and that change was "inevitable." "I have sometimes been homesick for the ways of those self-contained farms of forty years ago as I have for the kindly folk who lived in them. But I know it is no more possible to revive those old conditions than it is to summon back the relations and friends in the cemetery yonder...We must accept what is inevitable in the changes that have taken place. It is fortunate indeed that the principles upon which our government was founded require no alteration to meet these changes."

Hoover, if this speech is any indication, was a man of progress. Nostalgia is always linked to progress. Why do we get sentimental for lost worlds? Is it because we truly believe that those worlds were better places than the ones that exist today? Or is it because we, like Hoover, use nostalgia as a means of reminding ourselves how "better" our lives are today? Leach, in a masterful piece of cultural criticism, takes Hoover's progressivism to task:

Hoover's West Branch speech was poignant in its way, but it was also nostalgia, ending in self-serving optimism; at its heart was a fervent belief in "progress" and a total confidence in the rightness (the inexorable rightness) of America's evolution. Hoover had little sympathy, it appears, with those writers of the decade who also believed that America's cultural life was embodied in the West Branch's of America--small towns, face-to-face intimacies, shared loyalties, and a common sense of destiny--but who feared the pace and character of progress...For Hoover, the choice seemed clear: civilization over culture, international and national markets over local and regional ones, an ever-expanding standard of living over the relatively unchanging but sufficient simple life, mass production and mass consumption over West Branch. What is lost, alas, is lost.

I think I get nostalgic about Turkey Mountain because I believe that growing up there was good.

Do You Have a Favorite Michael Jackson Song?

I wasn't sure if I was going to say anything about the death of Michael Jackson on this blog. I was never much of a Jackson fan and I thought I would leave the eulogies up to the folks who knew more about him and his music. I tend to resonate a lot with John McWhorter's description of him as the "man who wasn't there."

But then this morning I read the New York Times feature asking readers to identify their favorite Michael Jackson song. The survey included 20 second clips of what the Times deems to be his eight most popular #1 hits. (He had 13 in all). As I listened to all of these clips I was impressed with Jackson's incredible body of work. I guess I had never stepped back and examined his entire career before. Perhaps I was a Michael Jackson fan after all.

By the way, I voted for the 1983 classic, "Wanna Be Starting Something, although my favorite stuff comes from the Jackson 5 era.

What song did you vote for?

The Christian View of Human Nature and My Low Intelligence

In today's New York Times David Brooks has an op-ed on the discipline of evolutionary psychology. I do not know much about evolutionary psychology, but I found two things in the piece worth noting here. I should also add that neither of them are directly related to the crux of Brooks's argument. If you want to read what Brooks has to say about evolutionary psychology I'd encourage you to read the article.

Brooks starts off the article with a quote about human nature:

Has there ever been a time when there were so many different views of human nature floating around all at once? The economists have their view, in which rational people coolly chase incentives. Traditional Christians have their view, emphasizing original sin, grace and the pilgrim’s progress in a fallen world.

I was struck by Brooks's understanding of the difference between the economists and the "traditional Christians." It seems to me that both groups have a very similar view of human nature: Human beings are sinful and will chase something other than God to satisfy their desires. For the economists, human beings will chase money and things and comfort to make them happy. For the Christian, it is natural that sinful human beings, by their very nature, will be prone to pursue money, things, and comfort to make them happy. But it is the "grace" part of the equation that makes the Christian view of life different from the economist's view of life. People who have received "grace" should be avoiding the materialistic pitfalls of the Vanity Fair. Yet, it seems that most Christians I meet tend to gravitate more towards the good life as defined by the economists than a Christian understanding of the good life defined less by "incentives" and more by grace.

Brooks then goes on to write about a new book called Spent by noted evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller:

We are all narcissists, Miller asserts. We spend much of our lives trying to broadcast our excellence in these traits in order to attract mates. Even if we’re not naturally smart or outgoing, we buy products and brands that give the impression we are.

According to Miller, driving an Acura, Infiniti, Subaru or Volkswagen is a sign of high intelligence. Driving a Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford or Hummer is a sign of low intelligence. Listening to Bjork is a sign of high intelligence, while listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd is a sign of low intelligence. Watching Quentin Tarantino movies is a sign of high openness.

After reading this, I was shocked at just how dumb I am. I drive a twelve-year old Ford Taurus. (The other family car is an eight year old Chevy Venture with about 120,00 miles on it). I have never listened to Bjork, but I have listened to plenty of Skynyrd. And I prefer a good Adam Sandler or Ben Stiller movie to Quentin Tarantino any day of the week. (Last night I watched "Rocky Balboa" while I was riding my exercise bike and the night before it was "Night at the Museum"--for about the fifth time). I am wondering if I am in the right profession.

Fort Ticonderoga Seminar on the American Revolution

If you are in upstate New York this coming September please consider attending the Fort Ticonderoga Seminar on the American Revolution. (I have already received an excited Facebook message from a former student in the area who is planning on coming!). Speakers include Douglas Egerton, James Kirby Martin, and yours truly. I will be sharing some of my earlier findings from my ongoing book project: "A Presbyterian Rebellion: The American Revolution in the Mid-Atlantic."

Liberty University College Democrats: A Solution is Reached

Well, it looks as if Liberty University has solved their College Democrats problem. You may recall that the Jerry Falwell Jr. decided to remove the Democrats from the list of official student clubs because he was concerned about allowing the Democratic Party's views on abortion and same sex marriage to have a voice on campus. I blogged about this here and here and here.

After much deliberation, the University has decided to change its policy on student-run political clubs. Beginning in the fall, NO student clubs connected to political parties will have official status. In other words, the Liberty College Democrats will no longer be an officially sponsored student club, but neither will the Liberty College Republicans. Both clubs, however, will be permitted to hold meetings on university property.

College Republicans around the country are not too happy about this decision.

While I would rather see both clubs receive official support, I think that this may be the best solution for a place like Liberty University.

Faculty Furloughs

There is an interesting discussion going on over at The Adventures of Notorious Ph.D. about the way the economy is impacting faculty life. Notorious Ph.D teaches at a university that may institute a furlough policy for tenure-track faculty. If I understand this correctly, all faculty will be required to take two days of unpaid leave every month. The comments discuss the implications of such a policy.

I can't imagine this kind of arrangement at Messiah College. What does it mean, in practical terms, to be on furlough? Does it mean that a furloughed faculty member should not answer student e-mail, meet with students, go to committee meetings, or grade papers on the day he or she has chosen to take a furlough? Some of the commentators suggest that the furlough should be taken on the day in which a professor teaches their classes.

Others in the comment section are having to face serious reductions in travel money, pay, and course releases for scholarship. At Messiah, we are facing cuts in scholarship funding and may not receive our regular pay raise for next year. (A lot will depend on what the tuition numbers look like for the fall semester). But I can't complain. It seems as if we are doing better than most.

Writing Sheds Part 3

My quest for a writing shed continues. I have been looking at a few "barn-style" sheds that might convert very well into a small writing office in my backyard. (I like the gambrel roof on the mini-barn models because it allows me enough room for a loft).

I have measured out a possible spot for the thing. My kids love the idea and my wife is coming around. Now all I need is the guts to commit to it. I am worried about several things, especially climate control for my books and cost.

I recently started Michael Pollan's A Place of My Own. I thought I was obsessing a bit about the shed until I picked up this book. I have made it through about 100 pages and Pollan has not yet started building his little writing hut in the woods! He spent hours visualizing his shed, picking out a spot on his property, making sure the spot had the proper views of his house and pond, and assessing the structure's "chi." Then he consulted with an architect. From what I have been able to glean from the book, Pollan lived at the time somewhere in western Connecticut and the architect lived in Cambridge, Mass. Both of them took trips back and forth to discuss how this building would be constructed. (I am guessing that is several hours each way, but I could be wrong).

Pollan's book is inspiring (so far), but I do not have the time or the resources to build the kind of shed he eventually constructed.

I will keep reading and perhaps throw out a few more posts on this very engaging book.

Oh yes, I will also keep you updated on my own shed plans.

What Are Colleges Selling?

Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Brainstorm" blog, Kevin Carey wonders if college consumerism has "run amok." I think he has put his finger on something here. Colleges spend a lot of time selling bells and whistles--expensive dorms, regular pilates classes, and student centers with climbing walls and cafeteria food courts. (The University of Akron student center is pictured on the left). But how do colleges sell themselves as academic institutions--places where a student, as Carey puts it, can "become an enlightened, ethical, fair-minded public citizen." He concludes: "If colleges want consumers to make choices differently, then colleges have to take the lead in creating, promoting, and standing behind different terms of consumer choice. "

Review of Lindman, Bodies of Belief

I published a review today over at Religion and American History on Janet Moore Lindman's Bodies of Belief: Baptist Communities in Early America.

You can read it here.

Today is Our First Birthday!

One year ago today I began "The Way of Improvement Lead Home" blog. Here was my original post on June 23, 2008:

Well, I have finally given in to my blogging impulse. For the past year I have been doing some occasional blogging over at Religion and American History, but I have never held forth on my own site before. I hope to use this blog to update you on what is happening with The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment. I hope to keep this blog focused on events, reviews, thoughts, and anything else related to the book. I am not sure how long this blogging experiment will last, but for those of you interested in the book I hope you find something useful here.

As noted above, I started this blog to promote my book, but the more I blogged the more I enjoyed doing it. I continue to use the blog to tell you more about The Way of Improvement Leads Home and Philip Vickers Fithian, but I have branched out to cover a host of topics related to American history, religion, politics, and academic life.

On a good day we can get up to 100 visits to the site, but nothing has compared to my "Does Sarah Palin Speak in Tongues" post which received 59 comments and over 3000 hits. My series on Sam Wineburg and historical thinking was very popular and my weekly "Sunday Night Odds and Ends" usually leads to a relatively high number of visitors on Monday mornings.

As we enter our second year, I am hoping for more visitors and more conversation in the comments section. I am still looking for photos for my "places" features so send in pics of the places that have meaning to you in your everyday lives. And if you have a blog, please feel free to add me to your blogroll.

Thanks to all of my faithful readers!! I know some of you have been with me since the beginning and continue to read. If there is anything you would like to see on this blog, or if you have any suggestions, do not hesitate to contact me.

The Plight of University Presses

The Association of American University Presses held their annual meeting this weekend in Philadelphia. A report on the conference appeared in today's Inside Higher Ed. (The Chronicle of Higher Education report is behind the subscriber wall and Stanley Katz has commented on the meeting here).

The reports focus on survival. While the printed scholarly book is not yet dead, it does look as if e-books, small print runs, publishing on demand, and free content will be the wave of the future. But will departments accept an e-book for tenure and promotion? Katz wonders when humanities departments will "come to their senses" on this issue.

The Inside Higher Ed report mentioned a talk at the conference by Beth Jacoby, the collections librarian at York College in Pennsylvania. Jacoby confirmed what I have noticed happening among my students. They will not do their research in printed material unless it is required. Students rarely use printed reference books. Jacoby says that some of her students do not even know how to use a printed phone book. As a result, York College is investing its money in digital resources and on-line reference works instead of university press monographs.

The academic monograph's days are numbered. Academics will continue to produce scholarship, but it will soon appear almost entirely on-line. If future scholars want to write books they are going to have to learn how to write for larger audiences and publish their work in national and regional trade presses.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things on the web that caught my eye this week:

Twitter and university presses.

Focus on the Family's new president: We need more families like Barack Obama's.

Jeremy Beer reports from the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Are college students better off with full-time faculty members?

Heather Cox Richardson on writing college history papers.

Charles Cohen writes on Mormonism and the work of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

Jon Meacham on why theocracies are doomed.

Top 100 Banned Novels of the 20th Century.

Frank Gannon reviews Kevin Mattson's book on Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech.

New biography of Thaddeus Kosciuszko.

Do you take notes on index cards?

Diane Winston reviews Bethany Moreton, Between God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise.

But Can He Hit the Ball?

Apparently not. He never made it out of "A" ball." But you should still check out this swing from former minor league baseball player Josh Womack:

Should I Have A Microfilm Reader?

The Messiah College library has two microfilm reader/printers that they want to give away to a member of the faculty. At the moment, I have an old fashioned manual microfilm reader in my study. It loads at the top, has a manual crank on the side, weighs a ton, takes up a lot of space, and reminds me of one of those instant replay booths that NFL referees shove their heads into when they review a controversial play.

I now have the possibility (assuming that one of my other colleagues has not already snatched it up) of getting a more modern electronic (is that the right word?) reader with a printer attached. One of the machines is pictured on the left. You can read about it here. I have room for the reader in my home office, but I worry about maintenance, etc....

Anyone with some experience on these machines?

Is Teaching Necessary for Tenure?

Absolutely.

I am employed at a college that values teaching. (OK--what college or university does NOT value teaching? I guess my point is that teaching plays a VERY MAJOR role in the tenure and promotion process at my college). One must be a "satisfactory" (read "adequate") teacher in order to get tenure regardless of his or her service or publication record. One must be better than satisfactory in order to hold on to tenure and gain promotions. Since I have been here, I know of several faculty colleagues denied tenure and/or promotion because they were lousy teachers.

I occasionally do peer evaluations for my faculty colleagues. This means that I have to visit one of their classes and write a report about the quality of their teaching. I do not like doing this, but it is a responsibility that comes with being a college professor.

I teach at a small college (about 2900 students). I cross paths at one time or another with most of the full-time faculty on campus. Most of my colleagues are friendly and gracious. I consider many of them to be friends. So what if they are not good teachers and I have to say so? Fortunately, most of the faculty I have observed are very good teachers. I have yet to write a negative report; but someday I will. And in a small academic community a negative report could result in some real awkwardness.

I thus really enjoyed Gina Barecca's recent post at the Chronicle of Higher Education's Brainstorm blog. She writes about one of her former graduate students--she calls him Rick--who did a peer review for a sub-par teacher at 'Wombat State University." Should Rick write a negative report on this teacher's performance? What might be the consequences?

Here is a glimpse of Barecca's post:

How did he handle the letter he submitted to the department about the class? Did he acknowledge his deep reservations?
Now it was Rick’s turn to offer a long silence.

“No. I didn’t have the guts. I tried to convey my distaste for her style by making the letter generic, writing chicken crap like ‘She attempts to connect with even the most reluctant student’ although I did force myself to say something like ‘Perhaps she might consider taking the “Improve Your Classroom Skills” workshop offered by Human Resources.’ My chair wanted to take that line out because she thought it might hurt the candidate but the committee voted to keep it in.”

I told him that I thought he did the right thing by at least mentioning his concerns about the class, but I also winced when I thought about his colleague reading that line about her teaching.

I also wince every time I wonder if I have the guts to do what Rick should do.

A Calendar is a Moral Document

Here is a nice Father's Day piece from Jim Wallis, founder, president, and executive director of Sojourners.