Power blip

This day started out poorly. Power went out at 7:15, when it was 2 above outside. Evergy blamed “equipment failure,” promised to restore power by 8:45, then 9:00, then 10:00 a.m. Service was finally restored about 9:30. Happy days are here again!

You just don’t know how much you rely on electricity until you walk into a room and flip a switch – and nothing happens. What a wonderful world, eh?

Power or not, we left home to go to Resurrection Spring Hill for a work project on Martin Luther King’s birthday. We filled 800 lunch bags with prepackaged food – in less than an hour. That’s testimony to some careful prep work and the number of volunteers who showed up to help. I don’t think I’ve seen the church parking lot so full since opening day on Sept. 8. A great turnout for a good cause!

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Sad to say, I read that Alabama and Mississippi still celebrate King’s birthday in conjunction with the birthday of Robert E. Lee on Jan. 19. How can we celebrate the birth of a human rights pioneer on the same day that we remember (and some celebrate) the birth of a vicious slaver who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers (both sides) during the Civil War?

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In my most recent blog, I remarked on the death of two giants in our land, former President Jimmy Carter and theologian John B. Cobb.

Today I want to remember another giant, theologian Richard B. Hays, who died Jan. 3.

Since 1996, his book The Moral Vision of the New Testament has been a standard text in almost all seminary classrooms. Only months before his death, he and his son published The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, in which the elder Hays concludes that his earlier reading about the Bible and homosexuality was wrong.

In his earlier work, he stated that the Bible clearly condemned same-sex relationships. In his later work, he states though the rules have not changed, how we may interpret them has changed. We need to view all biblical passages through the wider, kinder lens of God’s love, for even God once admitted, “I gave [ Israel ] statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live” (Ezekiel 20:25).

Father and son Hays conclude, with Saint Augustine, that any reading of the Bible that does not lead you to greater love is a faulty reading. Naturally, the book has been greatly debated, and the elder Hays has been condemned in the usual circles for having changed his mind.

Such is the courage of giants.

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Maybe he’s not a giant yet, but Jeff Atwood is working on it. He’s the co-founder of Stack Overflow, a tech startup that was sold for $1.5 billion in 2021. He hasn’t revealed the size of his fortune, but he says he’s going to give away half of it in the next five years. He says it’s his way of evening out some of the inequalities between most Americans and the privileged few.

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It’s too cold to do much except blog, so I’ll be back soon with that promised mention of the top book of theology of 2024 and a surprising slip of heresy by a major Christian publisher.

Giants in our land

There have been giants in our land. Two of them died recently.

Former President Jimmy Carter died Dec. 29 at age 100. Though his presidency cannot be called “successful” overall – voters allowed him only one term – he is widely regarded as the best ex-president in our history.

He was known for his honesty. He promised that he would “never knowingly lie” to the American people – a refreshing change from Lyndon Johnson, who lied about the Vietnam war for years while thousands needlessly died, and Richard Nixon, whose lies about the Watergate scandal so tainted the presidency that we recently elected a professional liar to the position.

He was the first “born-again” Christian to be elected president, and likely will be the last. Jerry Falwell and other leaders of the “religious right” turned against him because he supported racial integration (see Footnote #1). In backing the candidacy of Ronald Reagan in 1980, they baptized predatory “trickle-down” economics and turned the “evangelical” wing of American Christianity into a branch of the Republican party (see Footnote #2).

Out of public office, Carter continued public life as a popular Sunday School teacher and hands-on supporter of Habitat for Humanity and other “humanitarian” causes.

The incoming occupant of the White House will no doubt take aim at some of Carter’s accomplishments, including his environmental activism, support for women and minorities, work to build a framework for peace in the Mideast, and the treaty he negotiated giving Panama control of its canal.

Whatever his political legacy, Carter will always be known as a strong Christian who tried to live out his faith in all aspects of his life.

Footnote #1: The right promotes the fiction that Carter lost its support because he backed abortion rights, while Reagan did not. Reagan’s record as governor of California argues otherwise. The real reason for the right’s opposition to Carter was race. It was an extension of the GOP’s “Southern strategy.” It worked, and continues to work.

Footnote #2: A big factor in Carter’s election loss was the ongoing Iran hostage crisis. Evidence continues to emerge that GOP operatives worked hard to undermine Carter’s efforts to free the hostages before the election.

          The other giant in our land whose death we mark is John B. Cobb Jr., a theologian and environmentalist who died Dec. 26. Though Cobb is known as a process theologian, his work is valuable to those in many Christian traditions.

          I especially appreciate him for several books: Grace & Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today, Jesus Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed, and

Becoming a Thinking Christian. The first two are part of my library’s “permanent collection.” Paging through them just now, I see that I should reread them soon.

A new season

I have not posted on this blog in a long time. I have written several articles in my head but never gotten around to putting them on “paper,” for various reasons.

 Perhaps, primary, I have been working on a new book.

 I am sick of writing books and then struggling to sell them. I thought it might be easier to write a proposal and a few sample chapters and then solicit responses to that. Save a little work, anyway.

 However, I never could come up with an outline for this book that satisfied me until I finished the whole thing. So now it’s done, and I’ve again written a book that will have to find a publisher. Oh well. It’s done, and I’m mostly satisfied with it, so we’ll see how it goes.

Couldn’t I continue to blog while working on a book? Something I read recently featured a writer who said that while he was actively working a book he couldn’t do anything else. Any otherwise unoccupied moment he had, he was back at the keyboard, working on the book.

In a word, you become obsessed with the thing until it works its way out of your system.

So that’s one excuse for staying silent so long.

Another is the current political landscape. My wife and editor warned me against taking a public stand politically, and I ditched several columns dealing with politics. My only comment now: We are about to enter a period of unprecedented political and social chaos. Pray that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and be prepared to stand up for it.

Short takes:

One: The movie “Conclave” is tense and exciting. It closely follows Robert Harris’ book, which is also tense and exciting. Some folks consider both as an attack on the Catholic Church. I can see why some hyper-defensive types would think so, but I can’t see it that way. If you thought the system for selecting a new pope (or any other leader of any religious group) was free of politics and intrigue, you are simply not being realistic. The Holy Spirit works in many devious ways.

Two: Linda and I really like the American version of the TV series “Ghosts.” The British version that started it all seems weaker in many ways, starting with the sketchy characters. Maybe it’s the difference between British and American humor, but the British version seems simply too mean-spirited to stomach.

Three: New TV series: “Matlock” is about a lawyer seeking vengeance by assuming a fake identity in a law firm. Even Kathy Bates cannot redeem such an unethical premise. “NCIS Origins” features an actor who is bigger and beefier than Mark Harmon and has a lantern jaw that Harmon lacks; another loser. Zachary Quinto is compelling in “Beautiful Minds,” but the soap opera backdrop and the flashbacks need to go. Meantime, the not-quite-new “Tracker” has gained real traction with me; it’s formulaic but nicely done.

Four: One good thing about a public library is that you can bail on a bad book without feeling guilty that you paid for it. Lately I’ve tried to read too many “literary” novels that are just pretentious nonsense. The last two books I checked out were popular fiction by popular authors. I got 30 pages into one and barely a dozen into the other before quitting. I’ve put my name on the list for several science-fiction titles of past decades. We’ll see how that goes. Yes, science fiction is often more down to earth than other literary endeavors.

Five: The Spring Hill branch of the Johnson County Library is great. Hard to imagine life without it.

Six: Resurrection Spring Hill, the seventh location of Church of the Resurrection based in Leawood, is going strong. Hard to imagine life without it, either. Christmas Eve services are at 3 and 5 p.m. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Seven: I should have hailed my pick for best book of 2024 when I read it months ago. Maybe I’ll get a review out by the end of the year.

Eight: Or maybe I’ll rail against a terrible blasphemy I just saw in an email ad from a major Christian publisher. Lord save us from such ignorance!

In any case, don’t forget why we’re celebrating. The Winter Solstice is Dec. 20. In Jesus’ day, it officially fell on Dec. 25. We don’t celebrate the solstice. We celebrate the birth of Jesus, on whatever day it actually occurred. Have a Merry Christmas!

Timely, unsettling, reading

Leading up to the election, I had tried to avoid any more heavy reading about things that might be related to it. Then a new book came in at the library that I’d put on hold, so I picked it up and read it.

The book was Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment, by Allen C. Guelzo. It’s a fine book, but unsettling reading in these unsettling times.

          The jacket reading provides a good description:

          Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States.

While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis.

          Allen C. Guelzo, one of America’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history.

He shows how Lincoln’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war.

In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War.

Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.

“Sharp and relevant,” you say?

The author himself notes: “It may seem uncanny that so many of our current frustrations with democracy were actually encountered by Abraham Lincoln a century and a half ago. … He, too, endured a political environment polarized between extremes that had little hope of reconciliation.

“Uncanny, yes, but also comforting that those frustrations are not novelties, however much they feel like them, and that American democracy has endured, risen and surmounted them once, and will do so again.”

It is comforting that a well-grounded historian can feel comforted on the eve of an election that is so contested that bitter polarization will continue for ages, no matter who wins. But it is small comfort because the time seems so fraught with danger.

And am I reminded that though the Civil War was long ago, the issues that caused it are still with us, as divisive as ever.

Exciting history

One of the finest books I read this summer is by Erik Larson, whose previous work I have managed to miss, though daughter Erica has praised him highly.

          This book is The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War.

          It focuses on the tense situation leading up to the first shots of the war being fired at Fort Sumter. This lonely outpost on a tiny artificial island was built to guard the entrance to the harbor at Charleston, S.C. It was still unfinished in the spring of 1861, when secessionists demanded that federal troops abandon it and turn it over to Confederate authorities.

          On April 12, South Carolina militiamen opened fire from several shore batteries. Heavy bombardment continued for 34 hours, and the brick fort was heavily damaged. Miraculously, only two men were killed, one on each side. The Union garrison surrendered with honor and was ferried to New York by one of the ships that had been unable to reinforce it.

          Both sides claimed symbolic victory. The war that followed lasted four years and claimed more than 650,000 lives.

Demon of Unrest tells the story far more vividly than I have related in the last three paragraphs. Erik Larson writes narrative history – history that is structured and narrated like a good story. And he sure knows how to tell a good story!

          As far as I can tell, he doesn’t fudge facts in doing it. I have long been interested in the story of Fort Sumter and its defenders, and I’ve read maybe a dozen contemporary and modern accounts. First Blood by W.A. Swanberg offers a more detailed focus on the fort itself, while Larson’s expanded view includes more about what was going on in Washington and elsewhere leading up to the battle.

Colorful characters include the fort’s stalwart commandant, Major Robert Anderson; Captain Abner Doubleday, who fired the first shot in the fort’s defense (and was later said to have invented the game of baseball, though he likely didn’t); and Edmund Ruffin, a fiery secessionist who fired the first shot against the fort.

          Larson’s account reads like the best of James Patterson and other pop novelists. He manages to slip in a lot of historical background even as he keeps you turning pages to see what happens next (even if you already know exactly what happens next).

          Readers who subscribe to the South’s “lost cause” fantasy will not be happy with Larson. He is not shy about denouncing the Southern ideal of divinely-granted aristocracy as bunk. But his portrayal of the Confederate figures in the story is fair and even-handed (except for, perhaps, his portrayal of Ruffin, who was a polarizing figure even among those sympathetic to his cause).

          If you want to delve more deeply into the fascinating story of the attempted assassination of Abraham Lincoln on his way to being inaugurated as president, may I suggest The Lincoln Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer. He’s a novelist and non-fiction writer who would probably have a lot to talk about with Erik Larson.

          I don’t mean to cast stones here, but I have recently tried (and failed) to read A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise and the Coming of the Civil War. It’s by David S. Brown, who is a history professor. Though his book has a great title, it reads – alas – like it was written by a history professor. Too bad. In our age of short attention spans and poor educational backgrounds, we need more history written by the likes of Erik Larson.