Thomas More

From a review of Thomas More: A Life

Over the last century, Thomas More has undergone three posthumous transmutations. In 1935 – exactly 400 years after he was executed for refusing to swear that Henry VIII was Supreme Head of the English Church – he was canonised by Pope Pius XI as a holy martyr. This declaration of his sanctity met a frosty reception in Anglican England, where the part More had played in putting Protestants to death for heresy before the break with Rome hadn’t yet disappeared from historical memory.

Then in 1967 came Paul Scofield’s moving performance as More in the film of Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons. Rooted in hagiographical accounts written by members of More’s family, it made him a hero, wise, erudite and humane, a man who chose to die rather than compromise his conscience in the face of tyranny. Yet a twist in the tale remained: the publication in 2009 of Hilary Mantel’s world-conquering Wolf Hall. In Mantel’s exquisite prose it’s Thomas Cromwell, not Thomas More, whose brilliant mind wrestles with the relationship between faith, integrity and power, while More, Cromwell’s opponent, becomes a callous, self-regarding zealot.

In Thomas More: A Life, her absorbing and deeply researched new biography, Joanne Paul sets out to rescue More from these violent swings of the historical pendulum. .... (the review)

The book review does well what a good review does: describing More's life with all its contradictions in the context of his time, as good history should.

I liked this description of More's most famous book, which I first read in a political theory course:

His best-known work, Utopia, was written in 1515-16, just as he was beginning to be employed as a diplomat by the young king Henry VIII. It's two parts consider the fundamental questions with which he was grappling: how far should a philosopher involve himself in the world, and what form should an ideal state take?

But the conclusions of its enigmatically supple satire have never been easy to pin down. Where does the truth lie in a dialogue about an imaginary republic called “Utopia” – “no place” – described by Raphael Hythlodaeus, a character whose name means “peddler of nonsense”, to a fictionalised “Thomas More”, whose surname in Latin is a pun on the Greek for “fool”?

Helen Castor, "The truth about Thomas More, Henry VIII’s brutal enforcer," The Telegraph, May 18, 2025.

Presentism

Patrick Kurp on "presentism," beginning with a quotation from Robert Conquest:

“History is not some past from which we are cut off. We are merely at its forward edge as it unrolls. And only if one is without historical feeling at all can one think of the intellectual fads and fashions of one’s own time as a ‘habitation everlasting.’ We may feel that at last, unlike all previous generations, we have found certitude. They thought so too.”

I heard it expressed by commencement speakers and others in more casual conversation that ours is an unprecedented age of uncertainty and worry. “We have never seen anything like what we’re experiencing now,” said an articulate and highly educated woman. I wanted to remind her of, say, April 1861 in the U.S. and September 1939 everywhere. The phenomenon of presentism is like a disease that causes blindness. We attribute a sort of proud uniqueness to ourselves and our era, an understanding fostered by narcissism and historical ignorance.

The speaker quoted at the top is Robert Conquest in “History, Humanity, and Truth,” the 1993 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities delivered at Stanford University. .... (more)

Patrick Kurp, "Fanaticisms and Factiousnesses Too," Anecdotal Evidence, May 12, 2025.

Agree when you can. Disagree when you must.

I am a believer in "honest ecumenism," that is, ecumenism that does not ignore or minimize the real doctrinal differences that do exist, but does focus on real areas of agreement. I've been encouraged by what I've read about Leo XIV. He seems committed to orthodoxy and seems to lack many of his predecessor's more annoying traits. Protestants and Catholics share much in common, but some differences ought not be ignored. Several years ago, Kevin DeYoung explained "8 Key Differences Between Catholics and Protestants."  He began:

Ask a serious Protestant today what is the biggest threat to orthodox Christianity, and he might mention cultural hostilities, the sexual revolution, or nominalism in our churches. But if you would have asked a Protestant the same question a hundred years ago, he would have almost certainly mentioned the Roman Catholic Church. Until fairly recently, Protestants and Catholics in this country were, if not enemies, then certainly players on opposing teams.

Today, much of that animosity has melted away. And to a large extent, the thaw between Protestants and Catholics has been a good thing. Sincere Protestants and Catholics often find themselves to be co-belligerents, defending the unborn, upholding traditional marriage, and standing up for religious liberty. And in an age that discounts doctrine, evangelical Protestants often share more in common theologically with a devout Roman Catholic steeped in historic orthodoxy than they do with liberal members of their own denominations. I personally have benefited over the years from Catholic authors like G.K. Chesterton, Richard John Neuhaus, and Robert George.

And yet, theological differences between Protestants and Catholics are still wide and in places very deep. It’s important to be conversant with some of the main issues that legitimately divide us, lest we think all the theological hills have been laid low and all the dogmatic valleys made into a plain. .... (more, with the differences)

Kevin DeYoung, "8 Key Differences Between Catholics and Protestants," Clearly Reformed, September 12, 2017.

Dirda returns

There are a couple of books I am eagerly anticipating, although publication dates are uncertain. One is Alan Jacobs' biography of Dorothy L. Sayers. His Narnian, about C.S. Lewis is my favorite book on CSL. The other is Michael Dirda's "appreciation and guide to the popular fiction of late 19^th and early 20^th century Britain." Dirda's "semi-retirement" was my biggest regret about subscribing to the Washington Post. Today, he returned as a guest columnist. He has been reading a lot, avoiding politics, and working on that book.

In it, I reintroduce many influential, if now too seldom read, classics of adventure, mystery, horror and romance. Some of my favorites include the three ornately written mysteries in M.P. Shiel’s Prince Zaleski, Richard Marsh’s astonishingly transgressive horror novel, The Beetle, J.M. Barrie’s multiverse play, Dear Brutus, and a shelf of swashbucklers such as Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood, Emmuska Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel and P.C. Wren’s Beau Geste, as well as E.F. Benson’s “spook stories” and Saki’s sardonic Beasts and Super Beasts. There are also long essays on Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Edith Nesbit, Rudyard Kipling, P.G. Wodehouse, John Buchan and Algernon Blackwood, among others.

I'm particularly interested in what Dirda says about the authors referenced in the last sentence above.

Michael Dirda, "Disillusioned by politics, I read these books to get out of my slump," The Washington Post, May 9, 2025

"Narrative trumps argument"

When art serves ideology, it becomes "agitslop":

.... The moment creativity and aesthetics are subordinated to a moral or political orthodoxy, the genius of the artist and his capacity for innovation is fettered and sterilised at the altar of conformity; his talent leeched, his vision gelded, and his work reduced to decorative obedience. The principle holds, whatever the orthodoxy; yet the creaking regime of identity-driven progressivism that dominates the arts still yokes it to moulding a new public character. But they are armed with a more potent medium than any of the 20th century totalitarian ideologies were armed with; the soft, on-demand murmur of television, smuggling ideology directly into living rooms under the guise of entertainment. Welcome to the world of agitslop....

Agitslop is easily defined — it is art made by social workers, not artists; content produced neither to inform, educate or entertain the viewer, but to gently marinade them in moral instruction. Sentimentality and didactic messaging are its hallmarks, along with high production values that allow it to reasonably pass for entertainment.

But the brilliance of agitslop lies in its emotionally manipulative scripts. By focusing on personal narratives — real or imagined — agitslop appeals to the emotional rather than rational part of the viewer’s brain and appeals directly to their sentimentality. Agitslop bypasses inconvenient truths like facts by reframing complex issues as a series of tear-jerking vignettes, each carefully directed to promote a specific emotional response in the viewer.

This strategy is not accidental. As behavioural psychologist Robert Cialdini notes, “people don’t counter-argue stories… if you want to be successful in a post-fact world, you do it by presenting accounts, narratives, stories and images and metaphors.” Narrative trumps argument....

By endlessly spotlighting the exceptional, the sympathetic, or the oppressed, agitslop alters what audiences perceive as typical or morally correct. It doesn’t matter that these portrayals are statistically unrepresentative; what matters is their potency as an agent for change. Agitslop’s role is not to reflect society, but to reshape it. .... (more)

Tom Jones, "The tyranny of agitslop," The Critic, May 1, 2025.

Standard Ebooks

I've posted before about an excellent source of free E-books:

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost.

I support the site, and as one of the benefits, I get an email every month listing the newest books there. Three of this month's notable additions:

• George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons (1867-1889)
• G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With the World (1910)
• R. Austin Freeman, The Eye of Osiris (1911)

C.S. Lewis often mentioned MacDonald and Chesterton as important influences. Freeman was the author of the Thorndyke mysteries. They are among my favorites, and I've posted about them before.

"A long obedience in the same direction"

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) on Christian discipline:

MANY people seem to think that the spiritual life necessarily requires a definite and exacting plan of study. It does not. But it does require a definite plan of life and courage in sticking to the plan, not merely for days or weeks, but for years. New mental and emotional habits must be formed, all our interests rearranged in new proportion round a new centre. This is something which cannot be hurried; but, unless we take it seriously, can be infinitely delayed. Many people suggest by their behaviour that God is of far less importance than their bath or morning paper, or early cup of tea. The life of co-operation with Him must begin with a full and practical acceptance of the truth that God alone matters—and that He, the Perfect, always desires perfection. Then it will inevitably press us to begin working for perfection; first, in our own characters and actions; next, in our homes, surroundings, profession and country. We must be prepared for the fact that even on small and personal levels this will cost a good deal; frequently thwarting our own inclinations and demanding real sacrifice.

Evelyn Underhill, "The Order of Love," from The Spiritual Life (1936), excerpted in An Anthology of The Love of God from the Writings of Evelyn Underhill, 1953.

Who are you?

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice; “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”

“You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?”

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, “I think, you ought to tell me who you are, first.”

“Why?” said the Caterpillar.

Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away. .... (more)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter v.

Questing

An appreciation of Christianity is not enough. To be saved requires faith. From The Telegraph on "cultural Christianity":

Being a Christian, I suppose I should prefer Christian jokes about religion, but I often find the Jewish jokes have more bite. Here is one.

The boy who is about to be bar-mitzvahed approaches his instructor with a troubled expression: "Rabbi, I have to tell you something important. You see, I don't believe in God. The rabbi stares at the sad youth with scorn, and replies, "Do you think He cares?"

Even as a joke, it is unimaginable that a Christian priest could speak like that. He would have to tell the equivalent boy that he could not be confirmed without faith. He would probably add, by way of consolation, something like "God loves you all the same."

For Christianity, faith is the thing without which, nothing. Faith is not sufficient — hope is equally great, says St Paul, and love is the greatest — but faith is necessary. The Nicene Creed, 1,700 years old next month, is a statement of what a Christian must believe. This requirement, this "I believe...", spoken by each individual, is something that a great many well-disposed people, especially in the modern Western world, cannot conscientiously say.

Hence the existence of what are known as "cultural Christians". These are people who like the tenor of Christianity, its moral norms, its tenderness towards the poor and weak, the beauty of its liturgy and art, its civilisational benefits, but do not in fact believe that, as the Nicene Creed puts it, Jesus is "the only begotten son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds" etc. ....

Dr [Rowan] Williams is surely right that cultural Christians, because they do not believe, are not fully experiencing the life that is Jesus. There is the world of difference between, as he puts it, admiring Christianity and being "called on to love God". But what I think he fails to recognise is that most cultural Christians know that.

They are not in a steady state of contentment about where they are. They may well be, as the Archbishop thinks Jordan Peterson is, "sad and angry". After all, nearly 2,000 years after Jesus was unjustly killed, the number of things to be sad and angry about seems greater than at any time since 1945. The point, however, is that they are questing. They need help in that quest. ....

But faith, in any case, is not something human beings can create for themselves.

All we can try to be is in the right place at the right time. Cultural Christians do at least recognise that they may be in the right place, which probably means they are looking for the right time. (more)

Charles Moore, "Cultural Christians already know what they are missing from religion: faith," The Telegraph, April 18, 2025.

"Will the Circle be Unbroken?"

Looking through some previous posts here I came across an article describing how the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? broadened the audience for bluegrass. Toward the end of that article its author noted the importance to bluegrass of another recording:

.... [T]he Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's expansive 1972 record Will the Circle Be Unbroken brought revered traditional artists like Doc Watson, the Carter Family, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, and Jimmy Martin back into the national spotlight. It remains an important crossover record that bridges revered old-school figureheads with a young, fresh audience.

"These albums really helped cross over into the mainstream, and I think remind people how powerful and important the music is," Lewis says. ....

There were eventually three collections of songs in a series of "Will the Circle be Unbroken" records/CDs. My favorite is Volume Two, the one that includes the remarkable gathering of musicians above (and more).


Fifteen Years Later, Bluegrass Is Still Reeling from O Brother, Where Art Thou? | Music Feature | Indy Week

"He is not here..."

Some years ago, when a family in his community had suffered a terrible loss, a Lutheran pastor preached an Easter Vigil sermon:

.... For almost two thousand years, humans have heard this story and for almost two thousand years we have been coming up with reasons not to believe it. Perhaps Jesus' body was stolen, it is argued, and the appearances to his disciples were the work of an imposter. Perhaps the appearances were a mass hallucination by the disciples, unresolved grief expressing itself as a sort of denial that he was even dead. Maybe the empty tomb is a later addition to this story. Maybe the whole thing is a metaphor for the power of Jesus' teaching. Maybe it is an echo of the stories of the pagan gods of the ancient near east, who go to the underworld for a season and then come back, bringing spring with them. The sun will come up tomorrow and life will renew itself.

These arguments are, briefly, all balderdash. Yes, the stories are strange and filled with mystery. No, they do not create one consistent picture of that morning and the days that follow. But the doubt and confusion are written into the story from the start. This is not a confidence game or a fraud or a metaphor. The stories would look totally different if they were. The people who were there believed this had happened. What and how, exactly, they couldn't say. But it was unbearably, unbelievably real to them. ....

Yet there it was, and there it is: a tomb with no corpse. A door opening to a possibility we may not even want to entertain. That there is something beyond the grave—not in our warm, rose-tinged memories, not in some distant shore where the souls of the righteous congregate, not in the recurring cycle of nature, spring following winter and day following night, not in our plucky human desire to go on living despite it all—but in the love shown to a broken body as it is knitted back together. In the care shown to a dead body as it is revived to life. In the promise of salvation and in-gathering of all the peoples that is initiated by this one lonely empty tomb. In a new age that begins now, in the devil being cast out from this one cranny of earth, hell being crushed under this one foot, death being deprived of its spoils in this one corpse. .... (more)

Benjamin Dueholm, "Preaching the Easter Vigil," The Parish Bulletin, April 17, 2025.

The day in-between

From "Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus" by A.J. Swoboda:

.... Martin Luther said himself that Saturday was the day that God himself lay cold in the grave. Friday was death, Sunday was hope, but Saturday was that seemingly ignored middle day between them when God occupied a dirty grave in a little garden outside Jerusalem. Saturday is about waiting, about uncertainty, about not knowing what’ll happen. ....

So much of Christian faith is Saturday faith. ....

A medieval theologian, Anselm, once described the kind of faith that comes with Saturday—fides quaerens intellectum: “faith seeking understanding.” By that, he meant that faith isn’t something that arises after moments of understanding. Rather, faith is something that you cling to when understanding and reason lay dead. We don’t believe once we understand it—we believe in order to understand it. Saturday’s like that: offering a day of waiting, a day of ambiguity, a day when God is sovereign even if our ideas and theologies and expectations about him are not. It is the day that our ignorance is our witness and our proclamation. Truth is, our intellect will always be one step behind in our love of God. We don’t love God once we understand him; we love God in order to understand him. ....

At times, we are all like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus who were really close to Jesus but didn’t always know it. In Luke 24, two disciples walked away from Jerusalem, where they’d just seen their Lord and Master die on the cross. Leaving, dejected, upset, hopeless, and broken, to find the next stage in their lives and careers. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus had been resurrected and was actually walking alongside them on their way to Emmaus. The hope of Sunday hadn’t dawned on them yet. The Gospels tell us that, on their way to Emmaus, the disciples were “downcast.”

That experience is the kind of experience Saturday is all about. .... (more)

This is from A.J. Swoboda's A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension between Belief and Experience, excerpted in Christianity Today.

Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus | Christianity Today

Good Friday

Kevin Williamson:

This week, Christians around the world will observe Good Friday, the most somber day on the liturgical calendar. The word good in Good Friday expresses an older sense of the adjective: holy, rather than desirable or positive. .... Good Friday is not an observance for the sort of person who insists he has “no regrets.” I don’t know what you do with somebody like that. But for people who understand, even if it is only at some instinctive level, the necessity of penance and reconciliation, Good Friday can be useful and purpose-giving, if not joyous. It isn’t only the joyous things that we need.

Kevin D. Williamson, "The Indictment and the Problem of Discretion," The Dispatch, April 3, 2023.

"Love one another"

Kevin DeYoung:

.... If you've never heard the term, it's not Monday-Thursday (which always confused me as a kid), but Maundy Thursday, as in Mandatum Thursday. Mandatum is the Latin word for "command" or "mandate", and the day is called Maundy Thursday because on the night before his death Jesus gave his disciples a new command. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34).

At first it seems strange that Christ would call this a new command. After all, the Old Testament instructed God's people to love their neighbors and Christ himself summarized the law as love for God and love for others. So what's new about love? What makes the command new is that because of Jesus' passion there is a new standard, a new examplar of love.

There was never any love like the dying love of Jesus. It is tender and sweet (John 13:33). It serves (John 13:2-17). It loves even unto death (John 13:1). Jesus had nothing to gain from us by loving us. There was nothing in us to draw us to him. But he loved us still, while we were yet sinners. ....

"To lay aside His crown..."

A good Lenten hymn. The last two verses here were unfamiliar to me, but I like them.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
To lay aside his crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb who is the great I AM;
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.

Then friends shall meet again, who have loved, who have loved,
Then friends shall meet again, who have loved;
Then friends shall meet again, in Jesus' presence, when
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved, who have loved,
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved.

Ye winged seraphs, fly! Bear the news, bear the news.
Ye winged seraphs fly! bear the news;
Ye winged seraphs fly! Like comets through the sky,
Fill vast eternity with the news, with the news,
Fill vast eternity with the news!

Anonymous; composite; 19th cent.

Tune: WONDROUS LOVE (6.6.6.3.6.6.6.6.6.3.)

American folk tune; The Southern Harmony, 1840

Conjubilant with Song included this about the hymn, which first appeared in 1811:

The tune for this hymn, adapted from an earlier folk tune, was first printed in the second edition of William Walker's The Southern Harmony (1840), in three-part harmony (and with only one stanza of the text). There have been many different arrangements of the tune since then, not only in hymnals but also as choral anthems and instrumental pieces.

Conjubilant with Song: Like Comets Through the Sky

An image

Re-posted:

I've posted about the Shroud of Turin on this blog several times. In 2009 I wrote:

The Shroud of Turin is the one religious relic that has intrigued me over the years, not as an object of reverence, but because of the possibility it could be authentic. Might there be an actual image of Jesus as well as evidence for His execution and possibly even the resurrection which had been preserved until a time when science could authenticate it? I should have known better — controversy about this sort of thing never ends and there is never enough evidence to erase all doubt. Nevertheless, the seemingly inexplicable nature of the image, the things a medieval artist would have been unlikely to know like the wounds on the wrists rather than the palms and the similarity to actual Roman methods of crucifixion, made the possibilities of the Shroud extremely interesting. .... (more)

The New York Post published an AI-generated image based on the shroud:

Olivia Land, "Face of Jesus? AI recreates stunning likeness of Shroud of Turin image that many believe to be Christ," New York Post, August 22, 2024.

"Every Holy Week thereafter..."

Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis were friends. CSL wrote about their relationship: "She was the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter. I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation—as I like a high wind. She was a friend, not an ally." Lewis approved of The Man Born to be King, a series of radio plays she had written for the BBC.

Lewis read the radio plays when her book was first published and then every Holy Week thereafter. This is the first letter he wrote her, on May 30, 1943:

Dear Miss Sayers— I’ve finished The Man Born to be King and think it a complete success. (Christie the H.M. of Westminster told me that the actual performances over the air left his 2 small daughters with “open and silent mouths” for several minutes). I shed real tears (hot ones) in places: since Mauriac’s Vie de Jesus nothing has moved me so much. I’m not absolutely sure whether Judas for me “comes off”—i.e. whether I shd. have got him without your off-stage analysis. But this may be due to merely reading what was meant to be heard. He’s quite a possible conception, no doubt: I’m only uncertain of the execution. But that is the only point I’m doubtful on. I expect to read it times without number again…. Yours sincerely C.S. Lewis (Collected Letters, II, 577f)

The Man Born to Be King is available at Amazon.

"Who is the ultimate sovereign..."

Meir Soloveichik on "America and the Exodus":

.... Ben Franklin made this proposal for a seal for the United States: “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Franklin’s suggestion reminds us that the Haggadah’s central exhortation—that we must see ourselves as if we had been slaves in Egypt and had been guided out by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm—is not only a religious idea but also one with political and moral implications. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has noted that modernity was formed by four revolutions: the British (in 1688) and American on the one hand, and the French and Russian on the other. In Britain and America, one source of inspiration was the Hebrew Bible. Secular philosophy guided the French and Russian revolutions. The former led to free societies, while French and Russian utopian revolutions ended in tyranny.

Why, asks Sacks, did Britain and America succeed where France and Russia failed?

The explanation is surely complex but much—perhaps all—turns on how a society answers the question: who is the ultimate sovereign, God or man?.... For the British and American architects of liberty, God was the supreme power.... For the French and Russian ideologists, ultimate value lay in the state...when human beings arrogate supreme power to themselves, politics loses its sole secure defense of freedom.... Societies that exile God lead to the eclipse of man. .... (more)

Cecil B. DeMille made two movies titled The Ten Commandments, a silent version in 1923 (poster above) and the more familiar one starring Charlton Heston as Moses.

 Meir Soloveichik, "America and the Exodus," The Free Press, April 10, 2025.

"The notion of 'Christian fiction' is problematic..."

Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and an adult convert to Christianity. From "The promise and peril of the 'Christian novel'":

The notion of 'Christian fiction' is problematic in the same fashion as is the notion of a 'protest song.' Consider: how many good protest songs have you ever heard, in comparison with the number of bad or terrible ones? I would be willing to bet that the latter list was a lot longer, and the reason is simple enough: polemic and poetry don't mix. Making a point or pushing an agenda sits very badly with the task of exploring the complexity of human being in all its fullness. ....

C.S. Lewis once claimed that it was much harder to present the Christian story to a post-Christian culture than to a pre-Christian one, and today we can see how true this claim is. Where I come from, people are largely inoculated against Christianity, or what they imagine Christianity to be. The history, the cultural baggage, the half-formed prejudices: all of these are compounded by a stark lack of understanding of what the Christian Way really is. Recently I was admonished by an editor for making a reference to one of Jesus's well-known parables in an article I was writing. 'Young readers today', she said, 'won't understand the reference.' I was shocked. When I was young, we all knew these things even if we didn't believe them. No more. The shared stories we once took for granted are blowing away on the wind. For all of these reasons, a Christian who wants to write a novel which even touches on his or her faith faces a steep climb. ....

How could a Christian write a novel in times like these, and what models might we have? Recently I read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, which I thought was a brave attempt to disguise the Christian pattern of the universe in sci-fi clothing. Some of it was inspiring or intriguing: the treatment of space as heaven — literally — and the portrait of an Earth occluded by evil spirits and thus cut off from God since ancient times, offers up powerful images to the imagination. That Hideous Strength, the final novel in the trilogy, points at our current spiritual dilemma with perspicacity. Lewis's ambitious, grand sweep of a tale showed me how a conceptual trilogy about the spiritual realities of Heaven and Earth could be constructed. But the novels are dated now, as any book written about space exploration in the 1940s would be. ....

Last year I was approached by the editor of the Buechner Review, a publication dedicated to the work of an author I had never heard of, and asked if I would write something for them. What they told me about him piqued my interest: Buechner was a novelist who had become a Christian — indeed, a Christian pastor — and then had to answer for himself the question of how to reconcile the two callings. So I said yes, and then I sat down with Buechner’s 1980 novel, Godric, which is a fictionalised account of the life of  St Godric of Finchale. ....

What he does is, in some ways, almost at the opposite end of the spectrum to the one that Lewis was inhabiting. While the Space Trilogy spreads itself over the widest vista imaginable, both literally and conceptually, Godric is a small book, in its scope if not its concerns — or its writing. Buechner sets out to tell the story of one obscure saint in one period of time in one particular place, and through that to illuminate the spiritual struggle that is the Christian Way. He does so, in my opinion, with great success. .... (more)

Paul Kingsnorth, "The promise and peril of the 'Christian novel,'" The Abbey of Misrule, April 9, 2025.

"All-or-nothing"

Michael at Shadow to Light usually takes on the arguments of atheists. This time, he posts on a subject that will annoy some Christians: "The First Chapters of Genesis":

There are many Christians who argue that the first chapters of Genesis must be read as literal history. What’s more, if you refuse to embrace such an interpretation, you are rejecting the Bible, therefore rejecting Christianity. I don’t agree. In fact, when I read the first chapters of Genesis, it’s seems clear (to me) that we are dealing with a significant amount of symbolism. In other words, Genesis reads more like symbolic history, an allegory that is conveying deeper truths about our past and who we are. The literalists would disagree, arguing that unless Genesis is literal history, describing things as they happened, it’s nothing more than a fantasy. And of course, atheists everywhere are happy to weigh in and agree with this all-or-nothing thinking. ....

He intends to do a series on the subject: "First, I want to lay out some of reasons I think Genesis is meant to be interpreted as symbolic history. Second, consider some of the truths that Genesis is conveying. Finally, consider what would be the historical truths."

Michael, "The First Chapters of Genesis," Shadow to Light, April 6, 2025.